


Waiting at the Gate

by Jikininki



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Also feelings, Blood and Gore, Dark, Explicit Sexual Content, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masochism, No Fluff, Pre-Canon, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recreational Drug Use, Scarification, Shame, Slow Build, Smut, Violence, mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 18:02:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4110043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jikininki/pseuds/Jikininki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>***This Story is Active Again*** 8/9/2017 Chapter 13 Up</p><p>Pre-cannon:  Driven together by circumstance two unwilling partners are immediately at odds when the newly recruited Nux is assigned as Slits new driver following the mediocre deaths of their unit members. Slit blames Nux and exacts his tyrannical retribution on the younger comrade but Nux, determined to be more than nothing, emerges shinier and more deadly than Slit bargained for. Nux chases his glory in the wasteland while Slit struggles to keep control over a force of his own creation. Fury and faith clash as a dystopia in decline consume the heroes and reduce them to savages fighting for the remains of their humanity. </p><p>**this story involves depictions of violence, murder, rape and abuse.**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

S--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slit and his driver Vol leaned against a wall, backs pressed against the cold stones that the sun hadn't yet touched. A small group of recent recruits sidled uncertainly about, waiting at the gateway for the Imperator to brief them. Slit looked over the gaggle of skinny teenagers. They appeared to be in their later teens but it was hard to be sure. They all bore features of the dire conditions of life in the citadel; scars, bruises, brands or tattoos. Soon they would all be sick. Ill from constricted genetics and hard life.

Some of them were still groggy in the oppressive morning sun, and stood cross armed and yawning. Others were talking and shoving and to the front Slit noticed a tall boy stood staring past the milling crowd at the line of cars waiting to take them onto the roads. This group had enlisted to be lancers or drivers from the repair boys a year ago and would be attending their first road mission. Slit and Vols' group would be leading them.

As they all gathered in response to the Imperator's summons, Slit and Vol shoved past the younger war boys to go stand behind their leader, Imperator Jeff. They looked out condescendingly over the nervous youths, exchanging looks with the rest of the older members of the unit. The imperator instructed them on the mission, which was a routine recovery for recyclable road debris. They all filed down the line of modified and armored vehicles, pairing off into assigned lancer and driver teams. Imperator Jeff, who had been overseeing the training of the recruits, paced behind, instructing new members on the important features of their assigned cars and making changes in the partner arrangements.

When he approached Vol and Slit he extended an arm, pointing Slit down the line, “Switch with the lancer two cars down. I want him to ride with someone more experienced.”

Slit hesitated, but when the scowling leader opened his mouth to reiterate impatiently, Slit slunk off the perch of Vol's vehicle and trudged along. He looked over his shoulder at Vol, who was watching him go with a slight frown.

He crawled onto the hood of a 1970s HZ Holden, a car Slit recognized as a fire car which was outfitted with flamethrowers, a shotgun, and a lot of thundersticks. He slid up the roof on his belly to stick his head in through the sunroof.

The younger driver was the tall one he'd seen earlier, and he was gripping the steering wheel and peering around the dash, fingers dancing over knobs and switches. He twisted around and stared up at Slit through the sun roof. His skin was painted in white clay just like everyone else, and the darkened sockets of his blue eyes made him look slightly deranged as his mouth hung open in an expression of happy awe. Slit nodded tersely. “I'm Slit, and you're to listen to me on this ride. What's your name?” he was raising his voice over the sound of engines starting up.

The young man started the engine and the car vibrated intensely while Slits hands instinctively roamed the hot metal surface for a handhold.

“Nux.” Nux responded, and Slit felt the rumbling car lurch forward after the Mack, Imperator Jeff's massive tow truck modified with excavation tools and harpoons. As speed picked up and they roared away from the Citadel, Slit glanced back over his shoulder to see that they had overcome Vol and Nux's by an increasing measure.

He flattened down against the roof again and yelled “Stay with the group! Don't ride ahead of the leaders!” and Nux slowed marginally but Slit, peering at him in the mirror, noticed a flicker of annoyance pass over his face. He grimaced into the sun and hoped he didn't have to put the kid in his place.

As the caravan rolled over the sands Slit made mental notes of his charge's skills. He was a natural, to be fair, but he was still inexperienced, sometimes veering wildly out of turns and sending Slits feet from their holds. Slit would occasionally bang on the top of the car with his palm to remind Nux to fall back into form.  
   
N--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nux was laying his foot on the gas and urging the road car's speedometer up further and further. He couldn't seem to help himself. He had been anticipating this day since he joined up. He was dimly aware that the older war boy acting as his lancer probably regarded this trip as a low octane chore, but he could hardly contain his excitement and his pride in becoming a driver. For him, this ride marked the first of many until his final ride historic.

He heard Slit bang on the window and tapped the breaks, but Slit pounded faster to get his attention. He realized the Mack was speeding up ahead of them just as Slit's face appeared in the mirror, “They've seen a buzzard crash site, we're going to check out the wreckage!” he yelled, and Nux revved the engine as Slit's driver edged up beside them. He caught the eye of his partner for the past year, Null, and laced his fingers together and held them up to form the V8 symbol, which Null returned with a wordless yell. Vol was giving Slit a thumbs up and Nux's heart pounded with anxiety. Reputation amongst war boys was of huge priority. He hoped fervently that he didn't fuck up somehow.

Suddenly there were shouts from up front, cascading through the caravan. The whine of several more engines were added to the racket and Nux saw the heads of the lancers in front of him swivel to the left. A handful of buzzard motorcycles descended upon them and the sound of bullets ricocheting off metal filled the air. He saw thundersticks being raised and the leaders sped ahead to head off attacks on the Mack.

Slit drummed on the hood with his fist and pulled a thunderstick from it's holster  
“Keep Pace!” he screamed over the noise. Dust was clouding up around them, turning the air red and dusky. The squeal of a motorcycle came upon them from behind. Nux concentrated on keeping pace with the rest, while periodically wheeling around in his seat to see what his lancer was doing.

Thunderstick explosions up ahead were giving off black clouds that engulfed them and obscured Slit and Null from Nux's range of vision. Slit was crouching on his perch and lining a thunderstick up above his head, aiming at the approaching bike. He let loose and the bomb went off, flames consuming both the driver and his motorcycle. Nux felt a flood of relief. When the smog cleared, they were heading up the rear with Vol and Null.

There was a rumbling behind them and Slit shouted warning. Several motorcycles and a spiked jalopy were roaring into view. Nux was gritting his teeth, laughing nervously and muttering to himself. He hadn't expected this much action on his first run, and he was desperate to prove himself. He followed the shouted instructions of slit while watching Null out of the corner of his eye.

When the buzzards met them it was in a fury of blaze and bullets. His ears were ringing as the pinging and popping of bullets danced in sprays across his vehicle. He heard shouting and leaned over to look for Vol's car.  
Vol's face was drawn and his knuckles were white, his eyes were flickering to the mirror that reflected the buzzards coming up on his ass. Nux could see Null feverishly launching thundersticks at the motorcycles crowding them in but Nux could also see that he had missed one after the other. The ratcheting of a machine gun caused Null to spin around to face the jalopy, hesitating a moment too long as a barrage of bullets tore through him and he crumpled into the lancers pit. The assailing car sped ahead, leaving the bikes to pick apart the surviving driver.

Nux gaped in shock and there was a hiccup in time. He couldn't believe that had happened. So sudden and unceremonious. No one had called out his name or witnessed him. It was hardly a shiny death; he had died because he was ineffective but Nux was seized with a sudden impulse to avenge the recruit's death. He pounded on the dash and roared with rage, stomping on the gas pedal. The car shook and sputtered and almost threw Slit as he tore off in pursuit of the spiked buzzard car.

 

S--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slit was hauling himself back up into the lancers pit after escaping death by seconds. His blood drummed in his ears, and his face was twisted in anger. He clawed his way to the sun roof and reached a long arm into the cab. He grasped Nux by the scarf and half dragged him from his seat. He brought the younger boy's ear close to his mouth and screamed, “Go back! Go back now! He can't defend himself you fucking idiot! Back me up!”

Slit dropped Nux and spun around to look for Vol. Vol was speeding scarcely ahead of the buzzards. He was firing his sawed off shotgun out the window and Slit could see the dust starting to overtake him. “Nux! Back me up! You stupid Bastard!...” He was yelling abuse as Nux hit the brakes, his face pulled in a furious grimace. Slit was readying a thunderstick. If Nux could edge them back just a few more car lengths he would be in range.

Then he saw the motorcycle come down on Vol's left. A ragged arm reached out and unloaded a clip of bullets into the drivers side window. Slit saw the car lose momentum immediately and sink into the distance. He didn't think about the actions that came after that. He managed to fight off the remaining buzzards and by the time he had slumped back into the pit, he and Nux had fallen far behind. Ten minutes caught them up to the Mack and the rest, who had come to a stop in the aftermath of battle.

The moment they stopped Slit vaulted off of the Holden. He wasted no time in yanking the door open and dragging Nux out of the car. Without preamble, Slit fell upon him and locked his fingers around Nux's throat. All Nux could do was choke and pry at the older man's wrists. He stared down at the blue eyed youth, teeth clenched. Nux looked terrified and his almost unmarked face was starting to turn purple. Slit fully intended to throttle the life out of Nux and, but other war boys intervened and pulled them apart, shoving them away and to opposite sides of the caravan.

Slit allowed himself to be lead away and fell into an angry silence as a rudimentary camp was constructed. He did not talk to Nux again until the next day after they had collected the wreckage and packed up the dead. Word of the fatal chase had spread, and Imperator Jeff sought out Slit before they rode back to the Citadel.

“I heard that Vol was killed as well as the new recruit?”

Slit glowered out over the horizon and answered, “Yeah.”

“Then it makes sense for you to take on the recruit Nux from here on out, as you are both already in this unit.”

Slit stared at the Imperator. “Vol died because of him!” Slit blurted out heatedly before he could stop himself.

Imperator Jeff's scowl was deepening and Slit could tell he was pushing his luck. The Imperator wouldn't care about the menial death of a war boy. He supposed it was stupid to care, or to wish that death hadn't come for Vol so soon.

He laced his fingers into a V and trudged back towards the fire car. There was no point in making himself unpopular with the Imperator.

Nux was already in the car, staring fixedly ahead. Slit bellied up on the roof to lean his head in. He looked at Nux, who's gaze remained fixed ahead. He could feel the fear radiating from the younger man. He reached in and grabbed Nux's jaw, jerking him around to face him.

“From here on out, you do what you're told...Don't ever go against me again, you fucking cunt. If you do anything to embarrass me on this trip or ever, I'll kill you. I'll make sure that you never see the gates of Valhalla.” Slit hissed into Nux's startled face.

They rode in silence back to the citadel.

N--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that Null was dead and Slit was his partner, Nux's reputation took a turn for the worst. War Boy missions rotated between units, and afterwards units have a week off of active training to heal or procure repairs for their cars. During this time, Slit abandoned Nux.

Disregarding tradition completely, the older man did not take on the role of a guide for Nux as was expected of him. He kept up appearances in front of the Imperators, Nux noticed, but otherwise he left Nux completely to his own devices. Nux frequently found himself embarrassingly confused about when or where to eat or bath or wash clothing or some other trivial attention. Once he had wandered accidentally into one of the milking chambers. After being ejected amidst squawks of protest from the women and the bellows of their guards, Slit had tracked him down for the purpose of sinking a fist into Nux's gut. Apparently, Slit had been in trouble for not keeping a better eye on his ignorant charge.

Unfortunately most of the other boys in his new unit seemed to take their cue from Slit and followed in shunning Nux. Nux had only known Null in this unit and now he knew no one, so he stayed away from the bunk houses entirely. He buried himself in car repairs and slept in his new car at night.

Curled uncomfortably in the cab of the Holden, Nux thought miserably about the impending training session the next day. He thought about Slit and panic prickled his insides. What would he do if Slit was still furious and attacked him again? What if Slit undermined his training or hurt his chances at glory in the eyes of the Immortan? Killed him out on the roads and left his body in the sand? These unsettling notions passed in and out of his dreams that night and were still with him when he awoke.  
S--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  


Slit lay awake early the the next day. He wasn't looking forward to working with Nux the fuck-up, and he lay in bed listening to the snores and groans of his peers sleeping around him. He had taken Vol for granted. It was understood that a war boy's death is closing in on him every moment since he is born, but he had never given a second thought to what now seemed like the inevitable. Like all war boys, Vol had aspired to ride to Valhalla in a blaze of glory but his death happened so immediately and inconsequentially that Slit had watched it happen as if it had been someone else. Someone who didn't matter as much. Slit frowned deeply at the memory of his partner falling behind without a single voice to witness him. He felt numb.  
Lost in thought he was only vaguely aware of the escalating racket; Shouts from beyond the walls, and the creaking of chains so large that the walls vibrated subtly. The sounds of yawns and creaking beds and the frantic beating of a war boy or two relieving a morning hard on. Slit rolls out of his bed, looking at the top bunk, where Vol used to sleep. Where Nux was supposed to sleep now. His lip curled at the thought of him.  
The kid himself was already waiting in the cab when Slit arrived. He didn't speak or turn around when Slit mounted the lancers post. He drummed on the hood for Nux to open the sunroof. He leaned in and Nux twisted around to look at him.

“Remember what I told you, Yeah?”

Nux mumbles an affirmative.

“What's that?” asks Slit sarcastically, and palms Nux's skull, nodding it back and forth. Nux jerked away with a little noise of dissent.

“Yeah I heard.” Nux says, louder.

“Good. Drive out n' practice your turns.” Slit ordered.

And that was how their training progressed. Slit told Nux what to do, that was it, and Nux did it. For what they lacked in morale they made up for in discipline. In the wake of Vol's death, Slit underwent a strange epiphany. He became meditative and irritable and he was troubled by weight of his fate bearing down fast upon him. He'd needed a blood bag twice in one month already. He felt the imperative to die historic now more than ever. Now that he appreciated that Vol was only ever important to him, he didn't want to end up like his mediocre, dead friend.

Slit spent the next ten months pushing Nux to improve. He wouldn't let an amateur driver keep him from realizing his glorious death, when such time came. He put him through endless runs, practicing formations with the rest of the unit, and then some. He took out his frustrations on the road and on Nux. When Nux didn't meet his expectations, he berated and beat him. He watched the naive young recruit crack under his thumb, and he enjoyed it.

   
N--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nux knew Slit was using him but he had little choice in the matter. Nux had learned to fear Slit and that any attention he received outside of training from Slit or his mates would be antagonistic. He loathed the lot of them, but he loved driving out on the open road, and even Slit's bullying couldn't take that feeling from him. He had thrown himself into his trade entirely.

Without many companions, he had taken to muttering to himself, and could sometimes be found bent over a V8 engine conversing cheerfully to it. With time, most of his unit (excluding Slit and his comrades) seemed to have excused his botched mission in light of his rapid progression in skill behind the wheel and the hood. Unfortunately now that their training had begun to include lessons in weaponry, Nux found himself spending more time with Slit than ever.

The sun cooked Nux's back as he crouched in the sand with the lancer, emptying and reloading the clips of an assortment of firearms. Slit watched him closely, trying to spot any mistakes. Nux didn't make one though. Without waiting to be told, he started again at the beginning and had almost finished when a funny irony occurred to him; It was under Slit's abuse and overwork that Nux was emerging shinier than ever.

A slow smile curled the corner of his mouth. 

“What?” demanded Slit, but Nux shook his head and let the smile fade.  


He glanced up at the lancer and mentally sized him up. His chest was broader than Nux's, but Nux was a bit taller. He'd experienced Slits strength first hand many times. Once, Nux had rolled the Holden coming down a dune, requiring lengthy repair time on the car and covering them both in bruises. Slit, in his fury, had grasped Nux by the back of the head and rammed Nux's face into the twisted edge of the upward facing chassis. He remembered the crunch and pain blossoming across the bridge of his broken nose, and the lancer's angry sneer. His eyes had narrowed into slits as he watched Nux double over, grasping his face and drooling blood into the sand.

Lost in resentment at the memory, Nux finished his last repetition of gun assembly with practiced precision. Finally Slit nodded and grunted, “Pack it up.” and stood to go back to the Citadel.

At that moment the distant rumbling of engines caused them both to look around. A unit was returning to the Citadel from a mission. A large truck was hauling a pod of guzzaline, flanked by several smaller cars. Nux and Slit both hurried to move their gear out of the way as the cars fell into file and the surrounding crowd of war boys parted. Cheers were rising from the crowd down the line and Slit and Nux craned their necks to witness the source of commotion. A ford mustang was bearing the sprawled and mangled corpse of a war boy. As it drew even with the driver and lancer, they could see that his eyes were opened in death and his slack mouth was silver.

“Witness Kosov!” roared one of the riders atop the mustang, and his cry was echoed many times. Slit was calling out the fallen's name and holding his arms up high, fingers laced together. Nux was amazed. He had grown up listening, enraptured, to the stories of war boys riding historic in Valhalla by sacrificing their bodies and lives to Immortan Joe's cause. He used to lay awake at night imagining his own body being burned up in a blast, his skin peeling off his bones as teeth glinted in the sun, with the eyes of his brothers upon him. His heart was racing with the same excitement now as it had on those nights. He lost himself in screaming praise for Kosov alongside Slit.

S--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Several months later, Slit was in bed, dreaming fitfully. He was riding atop the Holden with Nux as his driver. He was launching thunder sticks into milky clouds of dust. The noises of revving engines and the beat of the war drums were oppressively loud. He heard gunfire and ducked instinctively. Screams. Nux is yelling and gesturing to a war boy balancing precariously on the hood of the car next to them. He hears the man call out for a witness and chromes his mouth, and when he turns, Slit realizes it's Vol. Overcoming his shock, Slit witnesses Vol at the top of his lungs, gesturing to Valhalla with fingers clasped in a V. Vol pulls the pin from a grenade with his chrome teeth and rolls off the hood and into the swirling, blinding dust. Before he hears the boom, he's knocked awake by a boot clanging off the head of his bed and falling into his face.

“Shut it!” hissed the war boy in the adjacent bed. Slit lobs the boot into the room with no particular aim and lays back down. Staring at the empty bunk above him, he can't help but think about Vol. He tried to remember how long he had known him. They had been partners for the last six years. Like many partners, they spent most of their time together. Vol hadn't been a talker, but he was clever, cleverer than Slit, not that he would admit it to anyone. Not that he would admit to most of what happened between Vol and himself.

A memory, from a place in his mind where he kept things like glimpses of breeders or Furiosa's ass in her tight daks floated through Slit's musing. He had returned with Vol from battle. They had been victorious, with almost no one injured. High on adrenaline and ill begotten grog, Slit had wandered off from the celebrating to take a leak out a pulley window. In the secluded stairway, he'd happened upon Vol, cock in hand. Vol's blood shed in the battle had dried upon his long torso, standing out against the white clay. His head, the tawny hair beginning to grow out, was thrown back in drunk concentration. Slit, embarrassed, was about to back away when Vol had turned and looked straight at him.

His face caught the last remnants of light coming in from the window,throwing it into contrast. His carved mouth, like skeleton, parted slightly and Slit had no other way to explain it but that Vol was chrome in that moment. He didn't stop what he was doing, eyes locked on Slit, and the lancer was taken aback at his insinuation. Among war boys, rutting with one another wasn't at all uncommon, but it generally involved negotiations of one nature or another. He had never gone there with Vol before or any other boy. He changed this in several steps that brought their chests into contact. Frantic with nerves and the vague worry of getting caught, Slit spat into his palm and wrapped his fist around Vol's cock and felt it twitch. His breathing ragged, he rolled his wrist and clumsily managed to bring Vol off. He'd come into Slits palm, as the lancer used his other hand to hastily draw out his own hard cock.

He paused to wipe his hand unceremoniously on his drivers trousers, eliciting a growl of indignation from Vol which he ignored. Vol snickered derisively at Slit's desperation as he was pulling Vols hand towards him and wrapping the callous fingers around his cock. Slit had wanted to shut him up and get off, so he wrapped a hand around the nape of his neck and urged him to his knees.  


“You didn't do me.” Vol had complained.

“I will. Next time. Come on.” he had growled and stuffed his erection into Vols mouth. Split lips dragged against his skin, and Vol's fuzzy head felt just right between his palms. Hours ago Vol had been a hero on the battlefield, shiny and chrome and lethal, and now he was here on his knees gagging on Slit's tool. It turned him on, and soon he was clawing at the back of Vol's skull, forcing him to choke as he came.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains graphic violence and sexual themes.

Chapter 2

N--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two years of service under Immortan Joe found Nux behind the wheel once again. The car tore across the sand with Nux's boot urging the pedal down. The turbocharged engine rumbled and reverberated through Nux, vibrating his body and making gorgeous noise. His face was alight with boyish wonder, which contrasted oddly with his marred appearance. To keep off the sun, Nux's eyes and nose were darkened and glistening with the black grease that was never fully absent from his body.

He had gained injuries and their subsequent scars. The Citadel and her dwellers chipped away and gnawed on a man until he was used up, dead years before his time had this been a fair world.

Null's death had shocked Nux, but it had also decimated his illusions and he was grateful for that. He would have been completely unprepared for Slit's tyranny had he held fast to his mortality in any way. Under the pressure of his abrupt arrival into the brutal life of the war boys under the living god, he'd abandoned himself entirely to it's evangelism. It was the only way to justify some of the things he'd seen.

As Nux bore down on the rogue cars and rock riders on their bikes, he was yelling inconsequentially to Slit, who could not hear him over the noise and his own concentration as he crawled monkey-like over the windshield to crouch at the mounted flamethrower. Head bobbing with the movement of his vehicle, Nux cackled and babbled to himself unrestrainedly. Unit four had decimated most of their adversaries and Nux was in close pursuit of the remaining Buzzards.

As the pursuing team had finally closed in upon the rogues. Nux's wild grin flickered as a pelted grenade rolled under the ally car to his left and went off with a deafening thud. On the hood, Slit ducked his head in into his chest to avoid the blast of heat that rolled over his back. Their heads swiveled simultaneously to see their companions car careening towards them, out of control. Nux could see blood splattered on the inside of the cab. He chose to hit the gas and spluttered forward, threatening the shocks of his hot rod on the rocky terrain.

The remaining rogues were nearing the end of their stamina; only a handful of rock riders and their single surviving refugee car remained. Now that he was up close, Nux could see that their prey was driving a highly suspended old mustang, on massive tires that would easily traverse the rocks, if they could reach them beyond the dunes. Even now, many of his flanking companions had been forced to fall back due to the devolving road conditions. He wouldn't be able to go much further in his beat up Holden.

He gritted his teeth and pushed forward. Slit glanced back at him with a questioning look, but when Nux pointedly stared past him at the mustang, He seemed to accept that Nux was going in for the kill. He repositioned his knees on either side of the mounted flamethrower and shot it off twice, and pointed towards to mustang, signaling to Nux to bring him up alongside the vehicle. Nux was growling bits of disjointed profanity to the air around him as the vehicle wobbled and crunched under strain.

As hellish as his time had been with Slit as his instructor, there was no denying that Slit was lethal and shiny when they rode together. He reminded Nux of a machine. He could do a lot of damage and Nux had seen him take a lot of damage on several occasions. He hated him, surely, but he wanted to be just like him.

Jealously, Nux watched as he adjusted the gun on it's swivel and descended upon a rock rider. Towering above Nux from the hood, Slit's exaggerated grin stretched in a wordless roar as the flames bore down onto the fleeing rider. Aflame, the rider rolled from his bike and under the tires, creating a delicious ka-thump, ka-thump! Nux howled with derisive laughter and pounded the dash for Slit. They were almost in range of the mustang now and the only remaining companion, a plow car with a harpoon, was keeping pace with them. Slit was cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting to the ploy's lancer, and Nux realized what his plan was.

Aligning with the back of the mustang, the lancer of the plow car launched a harpoon at the trunk of the mustang and Nux gasped, “Yes!” as it punched through metal with a crunching sound and caught hold. The lancer clamored to the back of his ride and released the plow with a heave of his broad chest.

Nux suddenly overcame the mustang as it's momentum reversed rapidly from the drag. Slit pounded his palm against the windshield but Nux already knew what to do; he swerved to the left smoothly bringing them in line ahead of the mustang, and threw it into reverse as Slit scaled the roof and dropped into the lancers pit in the back. He emerged in the mirror strapped with his AK-74 just as the plows had dragged the revving mustang to a near halt. As Nux rode the breaks and brought them to a stop, Slit leapt onto the mustangs hood, pointing the gun at the windshield and screaming for them to surrender their weapons and abandon the car.

It was the most ecstatic victory to take the rogue slaves alive and Nux had helped made it possible. Overcome with elation at their success, Nux threw the rod into park and snatched his sawed off shotgun from the seat next to him and joined the others in securing their prisoners. He fell upon a cowering man and flattened him to the ground. He pressed the rogues face into the sand, training the shotgun on his cranium. Laughing maniacally, Nux fisted his fingers into the escapees matted hair hair and rolled his head to the side in order to spit into his face.

S--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slit was dividing his attentions between binding his prisoner and watching Nux savage his own. His protege' was spasmodically yanking the ropes this way and that, one knee digging into the rogues back, pinning him. Nux looked so vicious with his teeth bared and eyes wide. He looked happy, and Slit supposed he should be; they would all be praised for their actions. A strange lick of something like pride visited Slit for an instant.

As the sun was setting, their squad rolled back into the Citadel courtyard in triumph. As they spilled from their vehicles, hauling the prisoners out and forcing them to kneel beneath the gargantuan podium from which their Immortan peered down from high above. Slit felt a comrade spin him bodily to face the great leader, and a fist clamped around his and raised it in victory. His heart was pounding with righteous satisfaction and he felt almost holy. Nux and their two companions with the plow car were receiving the same treatment. Other war boys were pulling back the heads of their captives to reveal their treacherous faces to the Immortan and his Imperators, who were flooding into the crowd.

The ensuing raucous celebration exploded into chaos in no time. The Immortan had sent great casks of the bitter tasting liquor that was fermented in batches for the higher ups and war boys had populated their common areas and the hallways beyond them, shouting and taking advantage of the excited climate to riot and brawl. As Slit shouldered his way through the halls looking for his mates, he witnessed his peers devolving into primal beasts. Pent up aggression was being turned outward as the war boys inflicted themselves on each other, pushing and yelling and cheering Slit as he passed. He made little headway as he stopped frequently to accept drinks and accolades from his acquaintances.

The wheel rats had infiltrated the casks, apparently, because they staggered about in small rowdy gaggles amongst their older brothers. In one corner, a boy of maybe nine was heaving onto the floor, vomit spilling down his chin and he wiped his mouth with the back of the hand holding his flask. In another nook, one crouching rat was holding the arms of a very unfortunate boy behind his back while yet another was unlacing his baggy overlarge trousers with a wicked smile.

He finally recognized his mates, Rak and Kabul, by the IJ scar on the back of Kabul's head. They were standing on the edge of a crowd Slit couldn't see past. When he approached, Rak grabbed him by the arm and yelled in his ear over the uproar, spitting as he shouted drunkenly,

“Slit! Lookit who it is! I think Nux is gonna fight!”

Slit craned his neck to witness Nux facing off with Gal, a tall youth. Bemused, Slit shoved into the crowd to get a better look. Gal was towering over Nux, who's mouth was drawn in a snarl. He couldn't ascertain what the quarrel had been about, but Nux looked as wild as he ever had. The crowd had parted into two groups, merrily demanding violence.

“Witness Nux!” one of Gal's mates jeered sarcastically and the crowd laughed. Nux stared around defiantly and Rak and Kabul were elbowing Slit in the ribs and chortling over the object of their bullying making a fool of himself. One of men flanking Nux spat back “It's because of him that you got that grog, cunt! He already proved himself to Immortan Joe! He doesn't have to prove anything to you!” Slit privately agreed with Nux's friend but he remained silent, watching Nux's mess unfold.

Gal emitted a low laugh and regarded Nux doubtfully. Nux looked livid. Slit recognized the look on Nux's face as the same indignant fury that would sometimes pass over the features of the younger boy when Slit or his friends would correct him with their fists. Generally Nux tolerated Slit's taunting and manhandling with nothing more than a shove in response, but it didn't look like that was what he was going to do now.

With a furious battle cry, Nux barreled into his opponent and knocked them both backwards. He rained punches down on Gal until he was shoved backwards, using Gal's momentum to set himself unsteadily back on his feet. They grappled, snarling and spitting. The crowd had grown and the volume in the corridor was reaching a peak as the crowd prattled on. Gals hands fisted around Nux's wrists, and he jerked and pulled to free himself. Gal quickly twisted Nux's arm behind his back and wrestled him to his knees. With a sick crack, Nux headbutted Gal with the back of his skull and blood spattered Nux's shoulders as it burst from Gal's nose.

He used the split second in which the taller man's grip had slackened to run his shoulder against the other and drive him into the jagged rocks that lined the corridor. Stunned, Gal sunk to the floor but Nux was already up again, aiming a hard kick to Gal's head, which stilled him. The crowd went quiet.

Nux seemed to become gradually aware of all the eyes on him as the stunned silence dissipated and someone blurted, “He's dead!” in amazement. Gal's mates stepped foreword, looking at Nux in wonder. One put a boot on Gals shoulder and shook him. A low groan. They shouldered their mate up and off down the corridor muttering quickly to each other. The crowd descended on Nux and Slit lost sight of him for a moment. When he reappeared between heads and shoulders, he was grinning and accepting the drink being shoved into his face.

His mate, who's name Slit thought he remembered to be Nik (or was it Mik?) was saying, “A marker! You should mark your victory!” and other murmurings of agreement piped up. Nux, who looked intoxicated on power and booze, was smirking smugly and nodding. Slit knew where this was going. He'd been surprised, considering Nux's extreme pious zeal, that he'd not yet participated in the ritual scarring common amongst war boys. When a war boy proved himself in battle or devotion and received accolades, he would often allow himself to be carved to mark the occasion.

Kabul sidled up alongside Slit and listened to the milling group egging Nux on as he hopped on one foot drunkenly to extract a field knife from his boot. Kabul placed a hand between Slit's shoulder blades and forcefully guided him into the crowd surrounding Nux.

“What about tradition?” Kabul interrupted the room at large, beaming sardonically, and everyone turned and looked at Slit. Startled, Nux looked around as well. Slit laughed inwardly at the look on Nux's face. He looked unpleasantly surprised to see Slit there to say in the least. Kabul was referring to the tradition of older partners cutting their younger protege's scars. Noises of assent rose up amongst the group. Some of them exchanged mischievous looks. Everyone knew how hard Slit always was on his younger partner, and it was a bit of a running joke at Nux's expense.

Slit almost took mercy and delegated the job to Nik, but Kabul had already reached over and smoothly taken the knife out of Nux's hand and pressed it into the lancer's palm. Kabul would think this was funny. He had loved tormenting Nux the past two years, simply for the entertainment. Feeling suddenly obligated by the many eyes upon him, and also because he was feeling drunk and impulsive, he accepted the knife from Kabul and turned to Nux, leering.

“What kind of scar do you want Nux?” he asked. Nux, of course, wouldn't be able to refuse and save face. Everyone assumed Slit would be tough on him, and if he backed down he might as well admit he was afraid out loud, and Slit knew Nux wasn't going to do that, not on his big night.

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Nux, trying to recover from this unwelcome turn of events, looked around at the war boys passing through or looking on interestedly. A scarring was always a spectacle, and Nux had been enraptured whenever he was allowed to hang around to witness one. Excitement and anxiety bloomed in his sternum. It was his turn. He was finally getting the proof of his achievements. He wondered what he should choose. Nik had a scar in the shape of a gear on his chest. Some had patterns or writing etched into their shaved skulls, others had sliced their mouths like Slit. Some had decorated battle scars. An older war boy passed through the room, turning to at the commotion. His lips had been decimated by short vertical scars. The effect was impressive and reminded Nux of a skull. He made up his mind.

Nux pointed at the passing man, announcing, “Do me like that one!”

Slit looked at the man he'd indicated and his smile slackened a little. “You want one like a skeleton?” and Nux nodded. Slit looked into his face and Nux felt an uncomfortable twinge as he sensed something strange, an almost imperceptible furrow of the brow, ghost over his lancer's expression. But then it was over and hands were grasping him by the biceps and urging him onto the ground. Some people donated their scarves, dropping them by his head, and a wadded up jacket for him to stuff under his neck. Calloused hands were slapping him on the shoulders and tipping a flask into his mouth. Everyone was talking to him at once.

He Looked at Nik, who was nodding enthusiastically and telling him it was better to lie down. That they would catch the blood and hold his arms for him, which wasn't as comforting as he seemed to think it was. He allowed Kabul and Nik to kneel on his outstretched arms and Slit's face, lit by torchlight, loomed over him. His lancer straddled him and sat on his legs. He struggled briefly out of habit but forced himself to relax his lips and tip his chin up determinedly.

“Come on!” he growled impatiently, although his voice cracked a bit.

Without further to-do, Slit leaned over him and stared into Nux's enormous pupils. He placed the tip of the knife against the very middle of his mouth and pressed hard. The blade was sharp, so there was a momentary pause before the stinging began. Nux, trying to keep still, hissed in pain and blood flowed into his mouth. Everyone was cheering and jeering. Slit returned the blade to the original incision and steadied Nux's head by gripping his jaw tightly. He cut into the boy's mouth again and again. Nux struggled and made several strangled noises of protest when he would deepen a cut. He kept having to force mouthfuls of blood back through his teeth with his tongue, and then more hands were on him, wiping it away and pointing at areas in need of improvement.

Nux's eyes were locked on Slit. He felt completely overwhelmed. Pain and the foreign feeling of hands touching him all over. He squirmed involuntarily at a particularly deep laceration. Slit, apparently lost in concentration, shifted his weight to pin Nux's hips and Nux felt boots crushing down on his ankles to stop his spastic kicking.

Endorphins were starting to kick in and he felt the full effect of the booze he'd consumed. Aware of little beyond Slit's gaze and his grisly ministrations to Nux's mouth, Nux's eyes drifted in and out of focus. Slit shook his head by the jaw lightly to jog him to attention several times. His mouth burned and stung with the most lovely agony he'd ever known. Slit's legs on either side of his hips were flexing. Feeling utterly overstimulated, Nux realized he was getting hard. He blushed and fervently prayed that no one noticed.

Nux was not so lucky. When Slit shifted his weight slightly Nux felt him pause his work for a tiny instant and his narrow blue eyes snapped to Nux's, who stared back in panic. Slit casually resumed his work but cleared his throat and adjusted his position slightly, grinding into Nux, as if to make sure. Nux's pulse was thrumming in his temples in humiliation but his cock twitched. A very small smirk played on his lancers own mutilated lips and Nux knew that he understood exactly what was going on. Blessedly, to Nux's immense relief, Slit did not point this development out to anyone else and finally he was finished and Nux was hauled to his feet and swept away, Shining.

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In the days following, Slit watched Nux from afar. He had been soundly ignoring his younger partner for the duration of their time as driver and lancer and never thought twice about it. He suddenly fully appreciated how capable Nux really had become. He thought back to their victorious capture and how he'd felt an inkling of pride in his role in dragging him up. He'd become lethal, and shiny. Slit watched him like he'd never really seen him before.

Nux was sitting on the ground several circles away eating rations with his mates. He was taking small careful bites still, although the swelling had mostly subsided and the wounds had scabbed over. Slit found himself coming to the unwelcome realization that with his mouth carved that way, Nux reminded the lancer of Vol in the worst way. He couldn't stop thinking about how the thin young man had rolled underneath him, his bulge becoming obvious between them. He gave his head a shake to clear it, and Rak looked up from his food curiously, but when Slit silently stood and pushed away the remnants of his breakfast, Rak shrugged and pulled the extra rations towards him as Slit stalked out of the mess hall.

He wandered the halls aimlessly for awhile, feeling unsociable and irritated. He managed to escape notice until he ran across the same Imperator twice who suggested strongly that he report to the repair bay and make himself useful. Sighing, because Nux would almost certainly be there, Slit obeyed. Maybe he'd be working on the car's engine or whatever it was he was doing with his time these days. Slit rarely asked, and spent those portions of the workday repairing weapons with the other lancers. When he arrived he walked down the line of repair bays where metal sparked off metal and saws whined. The smell of guzzaline was overpowering.

What was left of the fire car sat unattended and Slit walked around it, curiously. Parts were everywhere, and Slit noticed immediately that Nux seemed to have gutted the thing; the chassis and engine and tires lay in general order in relation to each other, but the frame itself was gone. He heard a clatter and a scrape of metal down the line and peered out to see. Nik and Nux were struggling to carry the frame of a 5 windowed coup towards Nux's bay.

Nux noticed Slit. He dropped his end of the sheet metal and looked vaguely upset. His eyes passed over the wreckage he'd created, making sure nothing had been altered, Slit guessed.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, defensively.

“What are YOU doing here?” demanded Slit indignantly, indicating the heap of parts that was once their ride.

Nux turned around to point to the coup frame and caught Nik slinking away. He spread his arms and let them fall back to his sides in exasperation.

“You said you were helping!”

Nik gave him a look but kept going, abandoning Nux with his angry lancer.

Nux turned back to Slit and shrugged towards the heap. “I'm remodeling the car. They let me pick a new frame and I've got it all planned out..” Nux went on to recite the changes he was engineering, losing himself to his own enthusiasm for his project. By the time he'd finished Slit had gotten bored and and started dragging the frame out of the hall into the bay. Nux ran to help and they worked together in relative peace, Nux giving the orders for once.

Slit allowed himself to be bossed around, and was generally impressed by Nux's knowledge of engines. He watched the boy as he worked and talked, which he did unceasingly. It didn't seem to matter much if Slit was listening. He talked to himself, or the car. Slit had been aware of his habit of nervous chatter but hadn't realized the extent of it. The strong stench of guzzaline made him feel a bit dizzy and he wondered if Nux's brains hadn't been damaged by the fumes.

At one point as the evening wore on, Nux caught him looking. His eyes passed over Slit's face and seemed to arrest under the power of the older one's gaze. His mouth, striped in red, worked to finish a sentence that had died away. Slit could tell he was uncomfortable so he dropped his stare and shuffled in his pockets for his flask of sour grog, kept back from the celebration. He pulled deeply and offered it to Nux, perhaps in penance for what he was about to do.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey! There's sexually explicit non-con in this chapter.

Chapter 3

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Nux rose from a squat, knees clicking from inertia. It had taken them a while longer to mount the coupe frame than it had to finish the flask. His eyes and back hurt from bending over screws and bolts. He could feel the ebb and flow of his alcohol buzz distracting his senses. He walked once around his ride, rolling his shoulders to loosen his muscles.

He felt a mixture of anxiety, because of Slit's uncanny presence, and satisfaction for his work. He came to stop alongside his lancer as he finished turning his wrench, giving a few jerks to ensure tightness of the bolt. They had reached a stopping point and it was nearly dark, and only a single trill of a saw sounded in a bay down the line. Only a faint burnished glow lit their bay and Nux looked out over the expansive horizon where the sun was melting below the far rocks.

Slit was hovering in the back of the bay. Nux watched him, waiting for him to indicate that he was leaving, or even to explain himself. Slit's eyes were roving around what had become Nux's own semi-private bunk house. His eyes lingered on the stretch of blanket with a wadded up jacket for a pillow in the corner. Nux had eventually stopped sleeping in the cab every night but he'd never returned to the bunk house. Now he slept in his bay or, when it was sometimes needed for the vehicles of higher ranking war boys, on the ground somewhere.

Nux cleared his throat uncomfortably and began picking up stray tools and returning them to their hangers. Slit bent down to help and Nux was relieved that he seemed to be wrapping up his visit. It made him giddy to rub his talent in Slit's face, but it was nerve wracking to be around him after their unusually close contact as of late. He was bending to retrieve a tool when Slit's boot suddenly kicked it out of his reach. 

The surprised driver didn't have a chance to say a word before he felt a grimy rag being compressed into his face. His nostrils burned at the assault of guzzaline fumes and black grease. His arm was being painfully twisted behind him and even as he thrashed and clawed and pushed Slit backwards as hard as he could, he couldn't free himself. He could barely even breathe.

Slit had been prepared for it. His boots were set apart and Nux wouldn't be able to move them. Slit shouldered his driver forward and flattened him against the hood of the coupe. Nux's head was shaking back and forth trying to dislodge the palm holding the gas soaked rag to his mouth. He was feeling dizzy and frantic. He knew what Slit was trying to do, but there was no way he was going to let this go down. He'd managed, so far, to escape this humiliating rite of passage that some had to endure and he wanted it to stay that way. Stars were twinkling in his peripheral vision and his fingers were losing feeling. His body was losing momentum while his addled mind was screaming for him to fight.

Slit released the rag and smoothly caught Nux's free arm and pinned it alongside the other. Nux gasped and coughed. His throat was burning and his vision had begun to lilt from lack of oxygen. He craned his neck to glare hatefully at Slit.

“I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you if you don't GET. OFF”. And he roared as he pushed against Slit with everything he had. His lancer dug an elbow acutely into the place between his shoulder blades and his struggling muscled failed under the pain. Slits face was next to his and he growled into Nux's ear,

“Shut up! You want them to hear?”

Nux considered this for a moment. He was completely pinned. He didn't want anyone to find him this way and his mortification resurfaced. Slit was using the rag to tie his arms behind him, grunting with effort as he pulled the knots tight.

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Slit straightened, but kept a fist securely on the back of Nux's neck. He stood behind the younger man in the near dark and caught his breath. Cautiously, he turned Nux's skull on its side so as to look at his face. Slit didn't know why, but he was curious to see what Nux's mutilated mouth would look like when he took him. Nux's expression was homicidal. Slit felt many things all at once; lust, guilt, and maybe just a little fear.

Nux was getting stronger and more confident by the day and he would be a fool to deny that. He knew from experience, however, that Nux never sought retribution against him, and he doubted that Nux would say or do anything that might lead to the discovery of this encounter.

He began to undo his trousers, fingers fumbling, when Nux piped up again,

“Slit!” he hissed, “Don't do this! Use someone else!”

But Slit knew that it really couldn't be someone else because... well... a man has needs, and Slit needed this.

Slit looked around to make sure no one was passing and pulled his fly apart to expose his half hard cock and then used both hands to undo the younger boys pants as well. Nux writhed desperately against his binds, kicking at Slit and accomplishing little aside from disrobing himself further. Slit grinned at this. Nux's lithe torso, almost unmarred, gleamed with sweat. Slit placed a callous palm on the small of Nux's back.

Nux was gasping in panic as Slit spit into his hand and rubbed the palm over the head of his swollen member. He pressed the head of it into the cleft of Nux's ass and watched his face for a reaction. The boy's eyes were screwed shut and his lips were moving as if to try and form a sentence. Slit sighed,

“Try to relax. Really.” and he pressed on.

He couldn't do it. Nux's arms were wiggling and squirming underneath him and he could tell that his whole sinewy body was tensed up. He growled in exasperation and snaked a hand down the front of Nux's pants and cupped his hand around his cock. It was limp to his touch. Then he remembered something. He pulled his pocket knife from his belt and flicked it open with a click. Nux's eyes were wide and he was shaking his head no, lost for words.

Slit pulled Nux's head back, causing his back to arch slightly. He pressed the blade against Nux's cheekbone. Nux went still and the only sound was the boys wavering gasps. He sliced. Nux moaned. Slit's breathing was getting faster. He dug the blade in further and wound his hand back between Nux's legs. His cock twitched in response to the fist wrapping around it.

Nux babbled more or less incoherently. “Slit...don't...ughnnn...” A wicked smile played at the corners of Slit's mouth.

Slit dropped the blade next to Nux's face and ran a thumb over the wound he'd made. He tried again. This time he was able to force the driver open and he stopped after the tip to allow Nux's breath to hitch and his body to spasm in a completely foreign pain. Slit could scarcely contain himself. He brought both hands to rest on Nux's hips, and he grasped them for leverage as he began to fuck the war boy trussed and helpless beneath him. Nux had clearly come completely undone and was groaning miserably in time with Slit's rhythm. When Slit's hand strayed to the younger boys cock, he found it stiff and moist at the tip.

Slit thumbed the cut again, and Nux arched his back. That was enough. He moaned louder than he had meant to when he came in spurts and spasms. Nux was beside himself. He pulled out and focused on his ministrations upon Nux's cock. Sweat and pre-come lubricated the palm that rolled over the head of Nux's member with every stroke. Soon he had tensed. His muttering ceased and his carved mouth was open in a silent scream. He screwed his eyes closed and ejaculated thickly against the side of the coupe.

Slit took the knife from beside his face as he panted, limp and exhausted. He cut away the rag and by the time Nux had pushed himself, shaking, off the hood, Slit was already walking away down the dark corridor.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for any typos and the like, just trying to fit this chapter into a busy week.

Chapter 4  
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Eight months previously Nux had stood on the hanging platform and heard Immortan speak. A demure young woman had stood next to him, white linen whipping around her legs in the wind. As he had announced the pregnancy Nux had cheered along with the rest of the citadel. Now Nux stood pressed in between the shoulders of the many sweaty, dirty people gathered in the courtyard. He stared at the ground and let those around him bump and shove him in their chanting and ardent praise of the Immortan.

This time they gathered there to hear the news of the still born, miscarried. Nux had heard this speech four times already in his young life. When this happened, there was always a mourning. It was an egregious affair, and all of Immortan's followers were expected to grieve for his lost potential heir. A great show of howling and lament always ensued, and later, a great drunken and bloody riot in the citadel.

Nux threw himself into the mob and proceeded to make himself as wasted drunk as he could before he lost energy or consciousness. He stumbled angrily through the corridors and up crowded staircases in search of Nik. On his way up, he ran square into Slit's mate Kabul. Nux scowled defiantly and shouldered past him so aggressively that Kabul knocked into the wall. Kabul stared back incredulously for a moment before pitching a few angry threats, but Nux had already breached the top of the stairs where he found Nik in a crowd around a brawl. He disappeared into the mass and soon, he would remember no more of the night's events.

The next morning Nux was becoming gradually aware of insistent booms forcing their way into his brain. His eyes under his eyelids were so dry that it felt as if he had sand in them. He couldn't bear the concept of opening them. He groaned nauseously and wrapped his arms over his face in protest that it was day. His hands groped over his throbbing skull and he vaguely noticed that his hair had grown out nearly a quarter inch. He’d almost dismissed the beating he’d heard as just another feature of his considerable headache but then he’d noticed the Kerrang of an amplified guitar. He sucked in a breath as he sat up much too fast.

The Herald. They were planning to ride out!

Nux groaned and stood, stumbling and almost toppling. He was surrounded by racks of hanging plants, casting a welcome shade on him. He must have passed out on the roof of the citadel. He squinted his eyes and blearily navigated his way to a staircase and began the clumsy walk down to the commons. He found Nik sitting at a table with his head down in his arms, clearly in a similar state. Nux prodded him.

“Nik? What’s happening?”

Nik jerked his head to indicate the sound of the Herald rising up from the courtyard but didn’t sit up.

“Imperator Jeff tol’ us we’re riding out before sunset.” Nik muttered into the table. “Bullet Farmer heard’a the trouble and he’s send’n back a gift. Another wife. Healthy in every way.” Nik imparted, looking queasy.

Nux nodded. That was good, another wife. Help things along. If he hadn’t been so hungover he would have been rather excited. Maybe after he ate and maybe even bathed. If they were riding out that meant that he was driving and Slit would be there. He felt the dull ache of humiliation and boiling resentment just at the mere notion of Slit. He hadn’t seen him since...since it had happened. Ever since that night Nux had descended deeper and deeper into a bitter despondency. He was becoming quiet and angry and if he could have spent every night following Slit’s visit to his bay as drunk as he was yesterday then he would have.

Scowling, Nux gathered two rations while Nik put his head back down between his elbows. 

They each ate their rations in silence, grimacing empathetically at one another. Nux felt as if he was coated in a thin layer of grease. He could smell his own stale sweat over his breakfast and his stomach churned. He choked down the rest of his ration and stood up with great effort.

“Let’s see if we can wash today.” Suggested Nux. One of the perks of war boy status was the opportunity to bathe occasionally if you got there early enough. There was only so much water to be spared so there was always the frustrating possibility that one would wait an hour in line to find the water was used up.

They were lucky enough to find that when they turned a tap in the washroom, water sprinkled out. The washrooms were designed for efficiency and featured a few dozen overhead hoses with shower heads affixed to them. Each station was positioned over a grate that allowed the water to flow down into the irrigation repository. 

Nux and Nik peeled away their worn rags and found a scrap of soap. They hurried to soap up, fingernails scraping away grime as they hastened to rinse away the desert.

“Want me to do your head?” Nik offered, pointing to a razor lying next to the soap. Nux ran his hand over his hair and was about to take him up on it when the water began to slow, and then drizzle to stop. Nux sighed and Nik shrugged, wiping water out of his eyes.

As he stood drip drying in the elevating heat of the day, he looked at his forearms. Absent of the white clay, he could see his blue veins under the skin. He ran his fingers absently over his scarred face, feeling quite as naked as he ever did. The only time a war boy was seen without his war paint was after he bathed or when he was in the sick bay.

He followed Nik to the great drums of white clay that were set out in the commons for the daily use of all war boys. They shouldered past several dozen brothers in varying states of undress. Nux almost stopped in his tracks when he spotted Slit reaching into another barrel. He’d clearly showered shortly before because he too was clean of grease and paint. Kabul, who it seemed was never far from Slit, was standing next to him unashamedly naked.

Nux turned his back quickly on them in hopes that he’d go unnoticed. Nik was smearing globs of clay down his arms and torso. Nux did the same and when Nik had completed what he could on his own, he elbowed Nux and turned the bare skin of his back towards him. Nux gathered more white paint and palmed it across Nik’s shoulders and down his spine. As he worked, he glowered over at Kabul and Slit out of the corner of his eye.

Slit’s unaltered appearance always surprised Nux. His face appeared almost boyish but for the jagged Glasgow smile that had obliterated any trace of innocence he may have once possessed. Slit was only about four or five years older than Nux, now twenty, and Nux looked him over, a sneer playing on his mouth. He’d never hated Slit more than he did now, but his animosity was now tinged with something else. It troubled Nux, like a something malignant growing inside him. His mood grew blacker and blacker the more he watched Slit smearing his taut abdomen with stark white clay.

Nik spun Nux by the shoulders and began running clay covered fingers over his back, but Nux tensed involuntarily and shrugged Nik off him, lunging away. Nik stood there, nonplussed as Nux embarrassedly twisted to smooth the white clay clumsily onto himself in an ill attempt to ignore the odd reaction to Nik’s hands on his body.

“What the fuck is wrong with you lately?” Nik demanded. A few people were staring now.

“Nothing!” hissed Nux evasively, pulling one of the small bowls of black paint towards him with unnecessary force. Nik scowled at him, waiting for him to elaborate, and when he simply began dabbing grease into his eye sockets and over his brow, Nik sighed and applied his own, watching Nux curiously. Flustered, Nux was unable to stop himself flicking his gaze towards Slit and it did not go unnoticed by Nik.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“Just leave it.” He murmured insistently. Slit and Kabul were both looking at Nux. He burned with embarrassment and hastily finished blackening his face. Nux was beginning to feel like several pairs of eyes were looking into his head and watching the events of that night in the bay as he remembered them.

Suddenly unable to tolerate the company of any one of the men around him, he rapidly retrieved his belt and boots and stalked off out of the commons, gawkily feeding his belt through his belt loops and fastening it. He carried his boots with him until he had made it all the way down into the courtyard and located his newly renovated Coupe. He ran a hand lovingly along the edge of the hood, taking a few deep breaths.

Nux squeezed his eyes shut against the sun, now hovering a few lengths above the horizon. It was almost time to go. He had to pull himself together. His heart hammered against his chest and his stomach was in knots. Slit would be here soon. He ran his hands over the fuzz on his head, yanked his boots on and got into his car. He fit the wheel into its hold, gripping it hard to stop his hands shaking. People were starting to stream into the courtyard. Black thumbs were bent under their hoods and lancers were checking their mounted weapons. Nux stared at the center of the cross mounted on the front of his ride, trying to calm himself. The drums were starting up. A disjointed trill of the guitar rose up here and there.

He felt the coupe lurch as Slit mounted the lancers pit. He glowered into the mirror watching his partner drop a machine gun onto its mounted hold. He fit a revolver into the back of his waistband and vaulted down again. He bent and came up with a fistful of thunder sticks. Slit was feeding the ends into all the holds in turn. Nux’s eyes followed him as he worked his way around to the front.

Slit slid the last thunderstick into its holster and met eyes with Nux. Slit’s face was impassive. Nux’s lip curled. Was he just going to act like nothing happened? Slit turned and rounded the car and it teetered again as he climbed up the back. Engines were revving. Slit knocked on the sunroof. Nux knew he was trying his luck but he ignored him. He didn’t know why; it’s not like he was going to be able to avoid him but it gave him a mutinous satisfaction. He began shouting at Nux but was almost immediately drowned out by the cacophony of sound that was the doof wagon, rolling past them to take a position up front. Nux let out a humorless little laugh. 

Slits head appeared from above the drivers side window. Nux looked sideways at him. He slammed his hand down on the window so hard that Nux flinched. Nux rolled the window down beligerantly slowly. Slit rolled off the hood and landed on his feet, leaning into the window of the coupe.

“What is this?” Slit spat as Nux glowered. “Stop fucking around! Pull yourselt together! Look!” and Nux craned to see a large vehicle approaching them from behind. It was the Gigahorse. Nux gasped and sprang into motion, ripping open the sunroof and squirming out of it onto the roof. As the double Cadillac monstrosity rolled past them, both raised their arms in an earnest solute of the V8. He could almost catch a glimpse of the Immortan.

Nux rounded on Slit and urged, “Hurry up! Lets go!” as if it had been Slit who was holding them up. Slit mounted the lancers pit with angry exasperation and they were off.

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Slit had not expected that what he'd done to Nux would have such a dramatic effect. Some boys bragged about their exploits upon their younger or weaker brothers. That he was the older and more experienced half of their partnership, it would have surprised no one. He hadn't bragged, though. He hadn't told anyone. He'd expected Nux to keep quiet of his own accord, but if Nux was trying to act natural he was doing a shit job of it.

Slit felt uncomfortable twinge of guilt. He was sure that he was the direct culprit in Nux's descent into furious self-destruction. He'd watched him become belligerent and careless over the next few weeks. Another, deeper scar appeared on the other side of his face, now grisly. Any occasion in which grog had been supplied found Nux wasted beyond control or function. He was in frequent squabbles with other war boys. He hadn't exactly expected Nux to take it well...but that was life wasn't it? Sometimes you lose the fight. He hadn't guessed that Nux would completely fall apart.

The coupe was speeding along the left flank of the caravan. He knew Nux was aching to edge up alongside the magnificent Gigahorse. It was a coveted privilege. Slit and Vol had ridden next to the Immortan briefly one time out on the road, and Vol had nearly veered off track in nervousness when the Immortan had held a hand out the window to acknowledge their V8 solutes.

It had been a shining, chrome moment in his life, and now it was gone. Once, when they were alone, Vol had told him that when they arrived in Valhalla, they would experience the glory of that moment eternally, except they wouldn't be sandy, hot, or grimy. They would be healed from the ails of their traitorous bodies and untroubled by continuous thirst for water. Vol had seemed so certain of his fate that Slit almost felt pity. He wasn't as faithful as Vol had been, and the last two years had only made him more cynical.

He wanted glory of course, but he wasn't naive enough to believe that it would salvage his soul anymore. The last traces of his conviction had died with Vol. He realized now that a death historic was still a death. With Vol, the prospect had seemed like a gateway to something greater, something inconceivably wonderful. If he chromed his mouth and died today he would live on in the stories of his brothers, but he hoped not otherwise. If he lived on he would be stuck, eternal, waiting at the gates of Valhalla for a ride that wasn't coming.

Slit intended to make the rest of his time on this crumbling earth worthwhile. The sunset was spectacular, with a far off crust of black clouds chopping up the rays of the sun into multi-hued spears of light setting the desert aglow. Unable to get close to the Gigahorse, Nux had finally fallen into formation near the rear of the caravan. 

Slit settled on his belly against the hot metal of the roof. He watched Nux’s face in the mirror. He looked completely exhausted. His eyes were fixed, staring straight ahead. Slit wanted to slap him upside the head to jog him back to his usual frenetic attention, and he considered it before he heard a mild rattle. Nux’s eyes flicked to the dash and Slit noticed his eyebrows creased together in an expression of vague puzzlement. 

The car coughed and started to slow. Slit sat up.

“Hey! What are you doing?” he yelled. War boys on other cars were watching them lose pace. 

Nux had crossed his arms over the steering wheel and rested his forehead against them, looking defeated. Slit gaped at him in bewilderment. What was going on? Why were they stopping? No way he forgot to…

The car sputtered and rolled to a halt. They were out of guzzaline. A motorcyclist from up ahead had fallen back to learn their status. 

“No gas!” shouted Slit in explanation when he came into earshot. “Go! We’ll use the spare drum and catch up!” He yelled. Nux was still laying on the steering wheel. The cyclist sped off noisily. 

 

Simmering with increasing annoyance he leaned over the sunroof and barked “Hey! What happened? I thought you were you supposed to have this car filled up and ready to ride!”

Nux didn’t answer but he jerked himself exaggeratedly off the wheel and threw the door open. Slit turned and watched him wrench open the fastenings that held the spare fuel drum. Slit crossed his arms and sucked his teeth crossly while Nux used a screwdriver to pop the seal, and pulled two lengths of tubing from one of his pockets. He knelt with the drum before the fuel hatch and began to feed one end into the car. The sky was a dusty purple now. 

“You can’t fall to fucking pieces like this!” Slit started. “What’s your problem? Think you been treated unfair?” He was edging on a mocking tone now. 

Nux was stuffing a rag around the two extending lines now, and met Slits eyes insolently for a moment before ducking his head to fix his mouth around the tube. He sucked on it to create the vacuum that siphoned gas slowly back into the empty tank. A strange, grim smile was playing at Nux’s ruined lips. He snorted derisively. 

Slit jumped down and came to stand over him. “What is it? You have something to say?” he demanded. 

Nux stood up and faced him. He spread his arms and let them drop. He laughed, almost disdainfully and he shook his head. 

“What’s there to say?” Nux ground out. His voice was off. There was a slightly demented tone to it. He was grinning slowly. The hair on the back of Slit’s neck stood up. Nux was thoroughly weirding him out. He wondered if he was going to try and fight him or something. Slit didn’t break his gaze. 

“Look at you.” He growled condescendingly, gesturing at his driver. “You’re turning into a fucking wreck. You can’t even take care of your car!” Nux looked strung out and a bit unhinged. “So you got fucked!” Slit added impulsively. “So what? You’re not the first tosser to get fucked in this place! Get over it!”

This reasoning didn’t seem to resonate with Nux, however, who stared at him in icy silence, grimacing in anger. The sky was deep violet now, and the sound of engines had faded away. The tank gurgled and Nux broke their gaze to test the siphon. It gurgled again and Nux spat out a small mouthful of guzzaline into the sand. He repacked all his supplies hastily and got into the car. He turned the ignition until the coup rumbled to life again. He began rolling forward without waiting for his lancer to mount. 

Slit wasn’t going to take this. He couldn’t allow him to disrespect him this way; it was a slippery slope to losing his upper hand over Nux, who was unraveling further out of control every day. He scrambled to catch up and vaulted into the lancers pit. He leaned over the sunroof to confront his scowling driver. Nux gunned the engine and he had to hold on tightly.

“Nux, get a fucking grip!” He bellowed. “If you think you can go around acting like this, you’re going to get your ass kicked! Don’t think I …” 

But he didn’t get a chance to finish. The car was suddenly screeching to a halt. A wave of sand crashed over the hood of the car and stung Slit’s bare torso right before he was thrown clear. He’d rolled over the roof, across the hot twisted metal of the engine and crashed painfully into the great cross mounted on Nux’s coup. The entire structure snapped away and Slit and the cross and four thundersticks were deposited skidding and rolling onto the road. It was by the most incredible luck that Slit had been thrown far enough from the thundersticks that detonated in between him and the coup that he was only a bit singed on one side when they went off deafeningly in the echoing dunes. 

Slit sat stunned for a few seconds, ears ringing. The huge central headlight was blinding him, and he felt as if his senses were being drowned out by light and noise and pain. The engine rumbled threateningly as Nux backed up a distance. Slit’s blood was pounding in his ears. He didn’t know what Nux was capable of anymore, and he wondered with a thrill of panic if he was going to try and run him over. He got to his feet, stumbling. The first thing he noticed was a single thunderstick, undetonated, laying illuminated a ways from the site of the blast. He crept towards it and snatched it up, aiming for the the headlight obscuring the Coupe in the dark.

Lancer and Driver faced off, each meters away from death. Slit was taking great ragged breaths and training his lance upon his closest estimation of Nux’s head. If he threw it he could end Nux on the spot; he wouldn’t even have time to react. He was certainly furious enough to do it, but who knew what damage would be wreaked on the car, and he didn’t relish being stuck alone in the desert with a corpse for company while he waited for the buzzards to come pick them apart. 

As if the mere thought of a Buzzard had summoned it, the whine of a single motorcycle pierced the pregnant moment from the other side of the dune. Slit knew that sound. It was just one, so a scout. Probably alone on lookout rounds. He listened hard over the rumble of the Coupe. Which way was it coming from? 

Nux clearly had not heard it or he would have cut the engine, so as not to alert it to their vulnerable presence. He pinched eyes closed in vexation. This didn’t look good. If they got out of this alive he was going to follow through soundly on the beating he’d been about to promise Nux before he threw him off their Ride. 

The whining was getting louder. Where was it? In front of him? It was coming over the dune and Slit angled his face towards the sound. He could see the cloud of dust rise as it slid down their side of the dune to come at Nux from behind, lights off. Slit took several steps towards the car and assumed the throwing stance. Nux revved the engine (the idiot) just as the bike rounded his side of the car. A spray of bullets plunked up the side of the frame of the coupe. The buzzard was trying to take out Nux first. 

He let his lance loose without thinking, aiming for Nux’s blind spot. By some divine luck or deliverance, his bomb hit it’s target in the dark. There was a flume of light and the thud of the blast and a few desperate screams escaped the bike rat before he was engulfed by the angry flames. After a stunned pause, Nux silenced the engine, plunging them into darkness but for the stars overhead.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual themes.

Chapter 5

N--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It took Nux several moments to sort through his confusion. He’d heard bullets and the kaboom of napalm and the subsequent screams of a man aflame. He spilled unsteadily from the cab and stumbled toward the gurgling, charred remains of the buzzard and his totaled motorcycle lying in the sand. A few embers danced on the singed edges of clothing clinging to the corpse. Regretfully, he ran a hand over the holes in the frame of the coupe. All the fire in him seemed to extinguish. He let out a rattling breath and due to his tinnitus, he felt rather than heard Slit approaching. 

He turned to face him, no long caring what he did to him. He couldn’t stop it, or at least he didn’t have the energy to try right now. When he was close enough to catch a glimpse of his lancer’s expression, he was dimly surprised to see that he didn’t look enraged. He simply glanced over Nux as if he’d been another dull feature of the landscape and squatted alongside the wreckage of the buzzard, picking through pockets and saddle bags. 

Nux watched numbly. He knew that catching up with the caravan was out of the question now. They were too far ahead and if Buzzards patrolled this area then they were isolated in hostile territory at night. Turning on the headlamp would draw bike rats straight to them. As far as Nux figured, they were stuck here until first light. 

He sighed, disheartened, sinking down to sit against the car. What was happening to him? Slit had been right: He was falling apart. Additionally, it was his fucking fault, his alone, that he was stuck here in the middle of nowhere with Slit when he could have been riding shiny and chrome in the Immortan’s caravan. He banged his head against the car painfully in chagrin, which felt cathartic, so he banged it again, and then again until Slit’s deadpan voice interrupted,

“Stop.” 

It wasn’t a request.

He sounded quite as miserable as Nux felt. He suspected that Slit felt similarly about who was to blame for their predicament. He rolled his head to look at the older boy, who was rising from a stoop and holding two canteens. Even in the dying light he could see that the left side of Slit’s body was scored with road burn, and his trousers had been singed. 

He watched him trudge stiffly over to the car, and he felt a dull satisfaction at his lancer’s apparent discomfort. Slit, grimacing, kicked lightly at Nux’s ribs with the side of his boot, opening the driver’s side door almost before Nux could scramble aside. He heard clunking and scraping as Slit was pulling the emergency kit from under the seat. He closed the door, plopped down next to Nux and opened the rusty box with a creak. 

The box contained a few ageless packages of hardtack, a sealed metal bottle of stale water, flares, and some bandages and the like. Slit popped open the bottle and glugged noisily. When he’d finished about half of the bottle he shoved it at Nux, who drained it with relief, wetness pooling in the ridges of his scarred lips, softening them. The weighted silence between them was making him feel anxious, and before he could stop himself, he blurted, 

“Were you gonna do it?”

Slit’s mouth twitched, and he seemed to consider it as he shook each of the scavenged canteens in turn. 

“Were you?” he countered. 

Nux shrugged. Slit opened and sniffed the larger canteen and resealed it. He put it in the box. He opened the smaller canteen and sniffed at it too, but this time he wrinkled his nose and snorted in surprise. Nux looked on curiously, letting the tense exchange hang weirdly in the air. Slit tasted a bit with his tongue and grimaced in disgust. 

“What is it?” asked Nux. 

“It’s piss is what.” Slit replied, but he threw back a slug of it and offered to Nux, who brought it to his nose cautiously. It was alcoholic but it smelled nothing like the sweetish grog that they fermented from vine fruits at the citadel. A few drops on his tongue felt like gasoline, and when he took a long pull he sputtered and coughed at its caustic burn all the way down. He gagged a little and croaked “High octane, that…” Slit nodded. Another awkward silence ensued. Nux, unable to help himself, broke it. 

“Really…would you have done it?” he prodded.

“Who’s saying I still won’t?” Slit retorted, snatching back the flask and bravely downing another great gulp of it, rolling his shoulders to hide the shudder. After a moment he sighed and turned his head to look at Nux. His expression, as always, was difficult to read, but Nux thought he caught something like sadness pass over his face. This was one of the rare moments that Slit looked him straight in the eye, and even rarer, he didn’t look angry. As unsettling as Nux found it to be stared down by his tormentor, he couldn’t make himself look away. 

Nux had never met or even seen Slit before he was promoted to their unit. He didn’t know what he had been like before they had been forced together as partners. He had, however, gathered over the years that Slit had been less mad once, before Vol died and Nux had come along to ruin everything. He knew Slit blamed Vol’s death on him. He’d never tried to atone for it, at first because he was too afraid of Slit and then later because he resented him too deeply. Would an apology have changed anything? He was visited by the sudden impulse to do so now. But when he opened his mouth, he said, 

“It weren’t my fucking fault. I didn’t kill him.” 

Slit’s eyes narrowed and his lips rolled away from his teeth in a sneer. His Glasgow smile made the corners of his mouth turn up strangely. The effect was intimidating. He shook his head with a mirthless little laugh. He seemed to struggle to respond. Finally He looked away over the landscape and Nux heard him mutter, 

“Yeah, I know you didn’t.”

Nux considered this. If Slit knew that, then why had he persecuted him for it for years? He seethed, 

“You…you been fucking me over… all this time…”

Slit cut him off by thrusting the canteen into his chest and standing up. 

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Leave me some of that, I hafta piss."

And he got up shaking sand out of his pants and stalked around the car. The wet gurgle of piss on sand was the only sound in the cooling night air. Nux hazarded the canteen again and was now starting to feel a bit drunk. He was glad he hadn’t apologized for anything. Feeling exhausted, he closed his eyes and let his head roll against the cooling metal of the coupe. He felt Slit settle back next to him in the sand and take back the canteen.

“I never told anyone.” Slit offered abruptly. 

Nux’s eyes flew open in panic. He’d spent the last few months agonizing over what Slit had initiated that night. He’d never been so angry and confused in his life, and it was true that the thought of everyone finding out that Slit had finally broken him was insufferable. He’d squirmed with humiliation thinking about Rak or Kabul laughing at how Slit had reduced him. Marked him. Played him against himself. He blushed hotly at the unwelcome memory of a drunken night somewhat recently when he’d laid alone in his bay with a razor blade to the opposite cheek, cock in hand. 

“Did you do it to him?” Nux had let the question slip without realizing it was on his tongue.

There was a pause, then Slit shrugged. That was as good as an affirmative, and Nux took it as such. He smirked grimly. So Vol had been just as weak against Slit as he was. It was odd. From the stories that he'd heard, he wouldn't have guessed it. Overcome with morbid curiosity, Nux asked, 

“Did he fight you? Did hold you him down?” He had no idea where this was coming from but he barreled on anyway. “Did you cut him?”

“No!” Spluttered Slit, thrown off. “No...It wasn't like that. It was...” and he trailed off angrily, sucking his teeth.

It was what then? 

“Like what?” he persisted, although he knew he was trying Slit's patience.

Slit turned to look at him incredulously. 

“It wasn't like...it wasn't like with you.” he finished, unsatisfactorily. 

“Did he fuck you?” Nux pushed.

“No! Fuck, Nux what the fuck!” He ground out, shifting uncomfortably.

 

S--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slit was dismayed that Nux didn't seem to be put off this weird line of questioning. What was he trying to do? What was the point? He'd never forced Vol that was true. He'd never fought him. He never had to. Vol had come to him most of the time. Sometimes it was a rough, hurried fuck. A sweaty, grunting desperate release stolen in a fleeting moment of privacy. Other times it had been a leisurely, almost silent suck off in the late hours of the night. Eventually they had settled into an unspoken agreement. Vol collected on his promise sometimes and Slit had gone onto his knees, with only a bit of protest for show. Was that what Nux wanted to know? That he wasn't the only one?

“Yeah maybe.” He amended his lie. “He let me. I let him. That's how it was.”

Nux gaped at him, nonplussed. Slit was prickling with frustration. Was he really that stupid? 

“It happens all the time you know...” Slit defended himself. “If it weren't me it would've been someone else.” he added, not quite sure if he was talking about Vol or Nux. 

Nux grimaced and nodded doubtfully, seemingly unsatisfied. Slit could see the veins in his neck pulsating. He seemed to be working up to something. He wanted to nip whatever pending outburst Nux might come up with in the bud but he didn't see how, so he drank more of the fiery liquor. He was deeply grateful for it; he didn't think that he could have stomached this without a bit of a buzz going. 

Nux was watching him now, wide blue eyes boring into him. He felt a creeping vine of remorse winding in his belly. Nux's young face was troubled with the weight of the world. He looked as lost and betrayed as anyone Slit had ever seen. 

He was unlovely, like all war boys with their ruined faces and sick bodies hardened against the unforgiving, meager half-life they were afforded. In the old world, Nux would be a kid with decades ahead of him. He might have lived long enough to lose the juvenile softness in his face and the lanky gawkiness of his thin sinewy body. 

Maybe he could have grown to be old and fat and possibly even wise. None of that could ever happen for Nux or any of them. At this very moment Nux had accomplished everything he ever would aside from the ultimate destiny. He deserved better. Or at least just a little more time. 

Slit decided right then that Nux was chrome. Shiny in a way that only another war boy could fully appreciate. Deadly, capable, and ruthless. He’d so willingly thrown away his health and his body to emulate and pursue death, even as it rushed to meet him. He wasn't sure if he was feeling sorry for Nux or for himself. 

“I'm not going to do it again.” he grunted. It was the best retribution he could come up with. 

This didn't seem to inspire any comfort in Nux, who was peering at him suspiciously.

“Why not?” the driver asked to Slit’s utter astonishment. A bemused laugh fell from his lips. Where had this kid come from?

“Why? You want me to do it again?” He challenged, sarcastically. 

Nux shrugged, many strange expressions passing over his face at once. Despite himself, Slit was interested now. He'd completely lost control over the direction of this conversation, easily the most uncomfortable one he'd ever entertained.

“What?” he demanded, trying to cut through the tension.

Nux struggled to give form to his thoughts. “No...I don't know...” he managed. Then, “You cut me. Why?”

Slit shook his head exasperatedly. He knew he hadn't imagined the hard on swelling underneath him as he'd carved up the younger boy's mouth. 

“I thought it would help...help you.” he finished lamely. 

“Yeah... It did.” Nux blurted, seeming to fall upon the crux of the issue. “I...I liked that. I liked it when you did my mouth too.” Nux managed, looking vaguely horrified at himself.

Slit knew he was talking about his scar modification, but he couldn't fight the visage this implied in his own suggestable mind. He gave in briefly to an image of Nux taking Vol's place on his knees in an isolated staircase. So his instincts had been correct after all. He could see it. Pain was so omniscient that often war boys embraced and fetishized it. Some way boys were like that, in that way.

It was his turn to wonder. Had Nux done that before? With another war boy perhaps, his friend Nik? Had he held another poor boy down over the hood of the car knife in hand? Only since Nux had started it, he gave into curiosity, 

“You've never...not before?” 

Nux wiped a hand over his face, shaking his head embarrassedly. Never?

“And not after?”

Another shake of the head. Slit was amazed. And drunk. He sloshed the canteen and took another mouthful before relinquishing it to Nux, who downed the last of it, making a face. Slit was ruminating on notions he probably shouldn’t be having. Slyly, he cast a sideways look at Nux, who was shifting uneasily. He decided to make him even more uncomfortable. 

“You never had your cock sucked?” He leered. “You never fucked anyone?” he was grinning now. 

Nux threw him an insolent glare. 

“No.” 

“You ever sucked a cock?” he pushed. 

“No!”

“You wanna try it?” Slit was fucking with him now. He felt as if he were channeling Kabul, who went in for jokes like that. 

Nux stood abruptly, raining sand, and faced him. 

“I thought you said you weren't going to do it again.” he retorted glibly. 

“Just offerin'.” Slit dismissed. Oh well. 

He was surprised when after a brief hesitation, Nux turned to him and seemed to force out, 

“A'right yeah. Yeah...”

“What?”

“Yeah I'll try it...I'll try it if you do what you did...”

Slit gaped at him. He hadn't really expected that to work. He laughed incredulously. “What I did? You want...”

“No!” Nux amended quickly. “With your hand...like what you did that time.” 

He was talking about the hurried hand job he'd afforded the boy in insufficient compensation for fucking him over his own ride. Slit looked pityingly over the kid in front of him, eyebrows raised. Desperate for a hand job. Well, that was no problem, he supposed. No problem at all for what Nux was offering him. He stood up and closed the distance between them. Nux flinched as he closed in, looking as if he might back out, but he didn't. He glanced furtively up at Slit but seemed as if he'd not the slightest clue of what to do next. 

Slit unbuckled his own belt and let the loose ends flap to the side. He was about to take out his cock but he caught the look on Nux's face, determined but terrified, and paused. He changed tactics.

“Here. Come here.” Slit didn't wait for him to obey but grasped him by the belt and spun him awkwardly to press his back up against the coupe. He undid the belt, and then the buttons holding the overlarge trousers on the lean young man. Nux was breathing noisily through his nose, staring at Slit's hands. Slit was watching his face. He slid a hand underneath the waistband and shivered a bit at the sigh that escaped Nux's lips. He was half hard and as Slit's fingers closed around him, his head lolled back and he closed his eyes. Slit palmed his package, working him to a full erection. Slit’s lips began to part in an unconscious smirk when Nux’s boots seemed to lose traction and he slid a few inches down against his car. 

Slit closed the fingers of his free hand onto Nux’s jaw and tipped his face up. Nux’s features were slack with pleasure and his eyes were half lidded in lust. He looked almost delicate, if not for the scars, Slit thought, running a thumb over his mouth. Nux’s head jerked a little and he seemed embarrassed, as if his gentle touch was somehow too unseemly. Slit grinned.

He thrust two fingers between Nux’s teeth and slicked them with saliva, wetting the younger boy’s lips with obscene deliberation, making the boy blush. He switched hands, using Nux’s own spit for lubricant on the driver’s shaft as he slowly pulled up and down. Nux was hissing, overwhelmed by the sensation. Slit could tell he was inexperienced simply by the way he was melting under his touch. 

Slit experimented with different strokes until he found that when he glossed his thumb over the head of Nux’s member on the upstroke, the driver groaned from deep down in his throat and his cock pulsed under Slit’s palm. Nux’s hips rose off the metal of the coupe and Slit let him fuck his hand in his own undisciplined way. Slit could feel his own ignored hard on pressing against its confines. 

Seemingly unsure of what to do with his hands and unable to hold still, Nux clasped one hand around Slit’s wrist and the other grasped around the metal of the car looking for a hold. He was gasping. Slit caught Nux’s wandering hand and forced the younger boy to palm the lancer’s hard cock through his pants. 

Nux’s eyes were flicking from Slits face to the fist around his erection, which was rock solid now. Slit knew he wouldn’t last long and he let Nux’s hand guide his movement for the last few desperate strokes before he threw his head back against the car with an audible clunk.

“That….ah!..unnngh…fuck!…” he was hissing incoherently now. Nux’s movement suddenly ceased and his breath hitched. The driver’s lips pulled back in a grimace of euphoria and he came in thick jets over his own chest. 

Slit was breathing almost as hard as Nux now, painfully erect. For no other reason but that it turned him on to push Nux around, he kicked the younger boys foot out from underneath him causing him to fall down on his ass in the sand. He tore at the fastenings of his pants, boots straddling his driver who was half collapsed onto his elbows in languor. He wrest his cock free and salaciously stroked it from base to tip, waiting for Nux to regain some control over his facilities. When the younger boy met his eyes, slack-jawed, Slit sank to the ground, kneeling above his driver, erection inches from his face. 

He sniggered wickedly at Nux’s alarmed expression. He slid a hand gently but insistently behind the younger boy’s neck and guided him to the preferred angle. Nux met his gaze, looking nervous. Slit ran the head of his cock against the textured surface of Nux’s ruined mouth. Nux allowed this and even let his lips part a little. His tongue darted out to lick experimentally at the head, making the lancer’s cock jump in response. Slit’s voice was a deep with hunger when he growled, 

“Go on. Suck it.”

And he pressed into Nux’s mouth, groaning at the sensation of his tentative tongue laving over the tip. True to his word, Nux tried. He leaned on one elbow and brought a hand up to grasp the base and bobbed his head very shallowly, cheeks hollowing. It was an arresting sight, and it made Slit moan and rock his hips. 

Nux was starting to find a rhythm when Slit lost patience and tightened his grip on the nape of Nux’s neck and thrust his cock down Nux’s throat. He choked, sputtering around the dick in his mouth. Slit pulled back enough to let him breathe but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Nux did his best to manage him, a gallant effort, but it had been so long…Slit couldn’t seem to help himself. 

He face fucked his driver, relishing the look of strained concentration on his face as he struggled not to gag. Several times he tested Nux's reflex and forced him to take his entire length before drawing back and making shorter thrusts while Nux groaned in discomfort around his stiff member. At the last moment, he pulled away and gripped his cock, frantically beating off until he was ejaculating over Nux’s face. Nux instinctively tried to jerk away but Slit held him fast until the last hot spurt of cum decorated Nux’s nose and mouth.

He tucked himself away and shifted off the younger man. Nux was using his arm to wipe his face. Exhausted, they lapsed into a mutual silence. Slit felt as if he’d released something he’d been holding back for ages, and now he had no energy left for thought or for conversation or anything else, and soon he had drifted off to sleep, slouched against Nux’s coupe.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some narrow escapes. Hope y'all like it. Let me know what you think.

Chapter 6

N--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The early sun bared down on the two war boys asleep in the sand. It had been an insufficient rest punctuated by many abrupt awakenings. In his paranoid slumber, Nux was constantly aware of the risks of being caught off guard by buzzards or rogues, and this awareness prevented him from drifting off for very long at all. The sun on his face was already roasting his flesh even as it climbed above the dunes on the horizon. He pulled his knees under him and sat up. Slit had one arm over his eyes, stubbornly blocking out the light, and his chest rose and fell slowly.

In the morning light he could see the angry red road burn spanning the lancer’s left side. His shoulder and bicep were raw and oozing, burnt from the napalm blast. Sand had adhered to it in the night and Nux could see bruises blooming from hips to elbows. He prodded Slit on his injured shoulder, and the lancer twitched. He prodded him again, earning an irritated groan and Slit threw his arm out clumsily to slap Nux’s hand away.

Slowly they both stirred to attention, groggily rubbing their eyes and brushing away sand. Nux’s neck hurt and he needed to piss badly. He rose with a grunt and wandered over to the wreckage of the buzzard scout. The corpse was attracting flies and Nux pushed the dreadlocked head with the toe of his boot, upsetting the swarm of bugs already devouring the crisped flesh. The chest and face of the bike rat was gored beyond recognition, nothing more than cooked meat. Nux smirked amusedly as he pulled out his cock and proceeded to piss nonchalantly onto the Buzzards corpse. He giggled derisively and muttered “Lit you up…yeah…how do you like that, cunt?”

The coupe’s door creaked as Slit repacked the emergency kit under the seat. Nux turned around to see Slit splashing a sparing amount of water onto his bloodied shoulder, grimacing, before taking a long drink from the canteen. Nux hurried to wrest it away from him, downing the last precious mouthful of water. He sloshed it around in his mouth, savoring the moisture for as long as he could. Slit cocked his head and before Nux could ask, he heard it too. The soft thud of the doof wagon’s drums in the distance. A flair erupted over distant rocks while both faces followed the red arch into the sky,

“An alarm!”

“Go! Go!” Shouted Slit, unnecessarily, as Nux was already diving into the driver’s seat and slamming the door. The engine revved, clanking and roaring to life as Slit rushed to mount in the back. The tires spit sand as they spun before gaining traction. They screeched back onto the road heading towards the Bullet farm. Nux squinted into the mirage forming over the horizon. Black apparitions were taking form, and Nux wasn’t surprised, because more red flares were flying and he could hear the screaming of guitar and the thud of drums and a battery of explosions and gunshots. His pulse thudded in his throat. The caravan was doing war!

Slit, always ready, was pulling one of the remaining thundersticks. Nux noticed him turning back and staring behind them, even though they could see glints of chrome in the sun and the orange blooms of fire ahead of them. What was he looking at? Nux took his eyes off the road to twist around in his seat. Dust was rising up. Someone was heading off the caravan, but who’s patrol would be all the way out here? The patrol from back near the citadel would be rushing to respond to the Immortan’s flare signals, but this was too ready, in Nux’s estimation.

Slit clearly thought so too because he leaned in and advised Nux,

“Better fang it. We’ve got patrols from the Sunken City…”

Nux, who was peering ahead grimly now, he could see the leaders of the caravan taking form out of the dust. Reflected in the mirage, Nux could make out the Mack, and the Ploughboy. Smaller rides laced back and forth, flanking the larger vehicles. There were a lot of them. More than there should be. The drums were beating in time to Nux’s heart, fast paced, booming. Buzzards, more than just the patrol, were pursuing them. Slit held an arm aloft and the thoom! of a flare erupted,a colored dust spraying the sky with yellow, for allies. Momentarily red and yellow flares answered.

The pitch of the guitar changed, and the sound of bullets echoed off the dunes, confusing their source. Nux was almost upon them. Bike rats and spiked cars were storming the ranks around the edge. Nux fell to the right as they came into range of the moving battlefield, and war boys raised their fists and howled in recognition. The second that they were remotely close enough, Slit was loosing his weapon and it flew true into the fray, blasting spiked rust into fragments. Nux flinched as a chunk of debris careened over the hood and cracked into the windshield. Fine lines radiated from the point of impact, and Slit swung out to the side to avoid being impaled or knocked off.

“Hold on!” Roared Nux, and spun the wheel, hand over hand, causing the coupe to swing, skidding, in an uncontrolled circle. Slit tucked in against his hold, holding tight against the centrifugal force of Nux’s wild turn. Bullets were singing past them and Nux felt the vibration of some ringing off his car’s exterior. He pulled his sawed off from below his feet and trained it out the window, using the door as a balance. He fired it with a loud crack and took out the tire of the bike rat, at least. He was pleased to see the bike wobble and crunch under the tires of a war boy coming up beside them. He recognized Nik’s charger from its’ decorative rusted panels Nik had cut into the shape of flames. A mounted flamethrower was operated by his lancer, Sid. 

 

"Fucking Sleg!" He growled as he turned his lance free onto the road. Bullets ricocheted yet again off metal. Broken glass was cascading over Nux's shoulders and it crunched under his boot as he rode the gas pedal. Slit flattened himself on his back to avoid the onslaught. As soon as there was a break in the volley of fire, Slit sat up and rapidly slung his legs into the sunroof and dropped into the cab. He crouched facing the rear, streaked with grease and sweat and road burn. He was panting, forcing air out through gritted teeth. He ducked cautiously and darted an arm out the broken rear windshield and hauled the AK in by the strap. He rested the muzzle on the window rim and returned fire, blowing the hearing out of Nux's left ear and leaving it ringing.

Motor bikes were everywhere. Through the dust and smoke Nux saw that Nik and Sid were keeping pace. Nik was hunched over his wheel, grinning as he kept low against stray bullets. Sid was whooping manically and hunching low to his weapon. They gained a bit of headway on the coupe and Slit and Nux turned their head at movement from the rear pit on Nik's charger. The injured war boy was pushing himself up unsteadily. His face and torso were striped with dark crimson blood, drying around his wounds. With one trembling hand he yanked the scarf from his face. His other hand groped the floor of the pit and came up with a grenade. His other hand came up and he ducked his mouth over his fist and sprayed his teeth chrome. He twisted unsteadily and looked up at Sid, who looked confused for a moment before breaking into an encouraging grin, raising his arms in the sign of the V8.

Nux only saw him mouth the cry of "Witness me!" Before he reached down and picked up a second grenade. He pulled the pin with his teeth, first one then the other and he held them up high when he took his final step off the back of the charger.

"Witness!" Screams were pouring in from the war boys around them. “Witness!” 

The ground shook and several motorbikes were exploded in the blast, shrapnel clattering down upon them even as they pushed to outrun it. Slit laced his fingers briefly in the V8 but didn’t seem particularly impressed by the war boy’s death. Nux on the other hand craned in his seat to gape open mouthed behind him.

“Glory me…” He murmured in awe. “Slit…did you see that!?” His face broke out in a happy grin. “So chrome! Did you see him jump? Going to Valhalla!” He effused. The lovely suicide of his unknown brother had given him renewed courage, but Slit didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was furrowing his brow and gazing past Nux.

"Look!" Slit gasped, looking past Nux. He turned his head to see the Gigahorse silhouetted in the dust. It was edging their way. There were only two cars of Immortan’s primary guard between them. Lancers for the Gigahorse were outfitted with mounted guns, thundersticks, and Rictus’ flamethrower. They were all bearing down the opposite side, where a large rusted truck outfitted with a ripsaw that was screeching against the chassis of the Gigahorse. A break in the smog allowed Nux brief, incredible view. Immortan Joe’s armored face was fixed on the oncoming road. A young woman with black hair and dark eyes was weeping openly in the seat beside him. 

Nux’s mouth fell open. He’d never seen anything so shiny. The hulking man pounded on the roof of the Cadillac and his Imperator bellied up the side of the vehicle. Immortan Joe leaned in and shouted an order into his ear, and he nodded tersely and scampered monkeylike back onto the lancers perch, pointing and yelling over the grating trill of the saw. Slit was trying to find an angle in which he could shoot underneath the chassis but Nux knew he was afraid to shoot out a tire. 

A pale armored arm extended and Nux and Slit both turned to watch their Immortan beckoned to the Buick and Cranky Frank, the modified rat rod belonging to a prime Imperator. He directed them forward. Then he thrust a pointing finger at Nik and Nux's cars in turn and waved them in.

Nux drew in a shuddering breath in amazement. They saluted and Nux fell in aside the Gigahorse, Nik tailing him. The two personal Guards roared ahead and fell to the left, adding their shouts and fire to the effort. Slit was standing up in the seat, shooting out the sunroof at the countless jalopies and rusted, dilapidated cycles.

A sudden rev of a creaky engine filled Nux’s ears and there was a tremendous impact upon the coupe, rocking him so hard that he had to use all his strength to regain control of his wheel. Slit drummed on the roof with the butt of his gun, as if Nux hadn’t noticed this development. Bullets. Another crash. Metal was crunching against his car and sparks were flying in his face. He could see the goggled buzzard driver aiming a cross bow at his head. He ducked and spun the wheel in desperation to swerve into the jalopy in retaliation. Immortan Joe was watching him!

 

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Slit’s teeth were clenched so hard that it was hurting his jaw. Everything hurt, but it was no time to worry about that. He was running out of ammunition. His last spray of bullets took out a cycler, and he ducked back down into the cab. He made to snatch Nux’s sawed off before Nux slammed the jalopy, causing him to topple into Nux, gun skidding the floor. He recovered and retrieved it.

“Shells!” he demanded, and Nux fumbled in his pockets, producing several handfuls. Slit redoubled his attack on the swarm. This was bad. An organized attack on the Citedel’s leader was a declaration of war. If he made it out alive, there would be more battles to come. Nux, who it seemed meant to guarantee neither of them made it out alive slammed his coupe recklessly again against the perusing car. There was a gash leaking red on his skull and his ear was caked in blood. A loud pop issued from between the battling vehicles and the car suddenly careened to the right, flattened tire sliding in the sand. They collided with the jalopy and then they were out of control.

The coupe began to tip, and then to roll. Slit ducked into the cab and the sound of crunching metal deafened him. He was being thrown over and over himself as the coup rolled right over the jalopy, crushing it. As it turned, the door fell open and Slit was dumped onto the road. An overzealous bike rat collided with the wreck and burst into flames. Slit covered his head instinctively as he lay in the middle of the road, shredded and bruised as cars careened past him. The caravan raced passed trailing only a few kamikrazee bike rats now. Slit was in a stunned daze as the dust cleared, revealing a trail of wreckage. He felt as if he had been dipped in pain. Every breath he took strained his ribs under a purpling bruise. He managed, after a few tries to get to his feet. 

The coupe was upside down, steaming. There were bodies lying in the road and they weren’t moving. He tripped over twisted debris. War boys and buzzards dead in the sand. A buzzard pushed himself up, his bandages frayed and falling from his burnt face and he emitted a low groan, his intestines spilling from a gash in his abdomen. Slit stared at him as he passed. If Valhalla was a road of glory then this was its antithesis. A hellion road, this was. A road of dead and dying men amidst the rust.

At the site of their wrecked ride, Slit's stomach dropped a margin. He could see blood on the glass of the crackled windshield. Nothing moved. He crouched painfully and dug the sand away from the inverted driver’s side door, and it took almost all of his depleted strength to wrench it open. Finally it fell away from the frame with a creak and Nux's body was revealed, limp and twisted in the ruined cab. In his fist he was clutching an aerosol can of chrome. He hadn't gotten to use it, however, as his mouth was decorated only with blood flowing from his smashed lips.

Slit poked him, then shook him, but to no avail. Nux didn't move and remained limp and Slit heaved him bodily from the wreckage. He was numb as he took stock of his driver's damage. His left forearm jutted at an odd angle and his trousers were torn to shreds. Blood all over. Slit felt for a pulse on his throat, as he had seen the organic mechanic do. He couldn't tell if there was a pulse over his own blood drumming in his ears. Anxiety was dulling his senses. He shook Nux again and laid his ear to the younger boy's chest. There. There it was, a beat. Slit let out a sigh he didn't realize he had been holding in.

In the time it took for an Imperator car to drop back for the wounded, Slit had still not managed to rouse the driver, so they loaded him unceremoniously into the truck bed. Slit squatted next to him, every bump on the road back to the Citidel eliciting a shock of pain in his crushed chest. It had been a grim day, and a very narrow victory.

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Some days later, Slit found himself under a bloodbag for the third time in the week following the battle. Under the dubious care of the Organic mechanic Slit had received a few staples and a bandage, and deemed lucky despite of his three broken ribs. Compared to Nux, that was certainly true. His face had swollen and his arm had been set but he lay unconscious, hour after hour, day after day. More than once the Organic had pointed out his likeness to a corpse bloating in the sun. No one had expected him to make it with such a severe concussion and most of their unit doubted that he would ever wake up.

But then he did.

Slit had been laying back, eyes closed as he waited on the infusion. Just a top off and he would be free of the dank, depressing hall that his driver lay dying in. He hadn't expected it, so it had taken him a moment to register the familiar voice, strange and distorted with disuse, murmuring disjointed nonsense.

Slit snapped his head up in time to see the Organic Mechanic shuffle interestedly to peer over Nux, the headlamp illuminating the young man's bruised, pale face. Slit rose and took a few steps towards him before the line connecting him to his bloodbag pulled taut. Nux squinted confusedly up into the light, and he muttered,

"Am I...I'm dead...I live, I die, I live again!" And he trailed off weakly. His muscles twitched and he faded out again. Heads turned interestedly.

"Boy! Hey!" The organic mechanic called, slapping him smartly a few times. Nux's head lolled and he tried again,

"I...the sun...Valhalla!" He croaked. This made the Organic mechanic and a few surrounding brothers laugh.

"Guess again." The Organic leered, wiping a rope of drool from his face with a dirty sleeve.

Nux looked around. He peered blearily into the face of the doctor and as realization dawned on him, he let his head fall back with a groan of massive disappointment. The crowd laughed again, and even Slit grinned appreciatively.

N---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nux received several visitors during his medical internment. Imperator Jeff and several unit members that came out of curiosity had passed through to acknowledge his survival, which he himself regarded as his failure to die properly. He was glad for the praise, though. Jeff had filled him in and unbeknownst to him, he had taken out several of the remaining enemies, helping them to secure the Immortan’s protection. His mood improved markedly when he learned that his ride had been recovered and would be able to be repaired.

Slit did not come, as Nux had expected, but Nik came most days. He had been helping with the Coupe's rehabilitation. Nux looked forward to his visits as a welcome distraction from the long hours of boredom and immobility. He was beginning to gain back strength and could take short walks around the infirmary, with Nik to lean on.

On several occasions, Nik had snuck in in the dead of night to bring Nux a flask, against the orders of the Organic who had prattled on about something to do with the thinning of blood.

One such occasion found Nik sitting cross-legged at Nux's bunk side, whispering drunkenly. Nux was able to turn on his side, and they put their faces close together to discuss the going ons of life outside the infirmary. There had been a celebration for those who had sacrificed themselves in battle, and Nux's face fell a little. He sighed,

"Should'a been me..." and frowned despondently. He had been very glum over this sore subject since regaining his consciousness, and little seemed to comfort him on this topic. Nik rolled his eyes.

"Wasn't your time." He told him, yet again. "It'll be your day, someday...”

Nux nodded and held out his casted arm for the flask they shared. Footsteps caused them both to shut up and listen. Nik slid catlike into the shadows and was still as another war boy passed the cot, but he was only a patient going for a piss. When he paced back through a moment later, Nik emerged from the darkness again, scooting in close, grinning conspiratorially. Nux grinned back. His friend had a quirked smile and was known for his ingratiating nature. He'd been the first one to befriend Nux in his first few months of exile and Nux would be eternally grateful for that.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, in which Nik almost gently tipped the flask against Nux's bruised mouth. He snickered as Nux winced painfully and drooled grog from the corner of his mouth on accident. Nux giggled quietly too, and he felt like a pup again, getting drunk in secret with his mate leaning on his bedside in the dark. Sparse moonlight leaked in through the high windows and he could just make out the outline of Nik's mischievous smile.

"What?" Nux whispered. Nik glanced around cautiously and Nux furrowed his brow questioningly. "Wha.."

But Nik was pressing his mouth clumsily to Nux's. Nux froze in surprise and Nik caught his bottom lip gently in his teeth before pulling back, peering at Nux curiously. He hadn't expected it and he didn't know what to say. A stirring in his belly reminded him persistently of Slit, who had touched him but never like this. He licked his tingling lips self-consciously, which Nik seemed to take as encouragement, for he leaned in, more earnestly now and kissed him again, persistently parting Nux's lips with his tongue.

Nux felt a thrill of panic, and a significant stirring between his legs. Nik's spit tasted like grog and aqua cola. This was entirely foreign. He moaned softly as deft, callous fingers came trailing across his jaw and rested on the side of his face, pressing and pulling him into the kiss. Nux shyly reached out his casted arm and let his wrist rest on Niks shoulders, pressing his fingers into the nape of the other driver’s neck. This simple touch seemed to set Nik alight and he slid closer, his mouth moving urgently again to catch Nux's lower lip, sucking and licking. He tipped Nux's head carefully to expose his neck and lowered his mouth to Nux's jaw, trailing hot breath and the subtle vibrations of a wanting moan.

Nux was breathing hard, his bandaged hand roaming across Nik's bare skin, making him gasp when he traced along his gear shaped scar. He tried to sit up but Nik quickly placed a palm on his chest and pushed him down. He sank onto his back, pulling Nik with him, trapping his mouth against his own. It was such a curious sensation. Nik's mouth was unmarked and felt impossibly smooth against his tongue. He liked this. A lot.

The palm on his chest was traveling down his belly now and Nux couldn't stop himself from groaning and rolling his hips in anticipation. Fingers danced at the edge of his trousers, plucking at a fastening. Nik spoke against his lips in a low whisper,

"Yeah...like that?" He popped a button open as Nux nodded quickly.

"Yesssss...” Nux hissed almost inaudibly, a strain in his voice.

Nik ducked his head over his mate's chest and let his tongue lap experimentally over Nux's nipple. Nux felt an electric shock and cried out. Too loudly. The sound of boots thumping on stone made Nux pinch his eyes closed in frustration. Dammit! He'd woke someone up. Nik had frozen, looking like a pup caught stealing. All at once his hands recoiled and he slipped the flask quickly into his pocket.

"Wait!" Hissed Nux, stupidly. Of course he couldn't. Nik withdrew rapidly, looking around then breathing into Nux's ear,

"Mine’s third bunk from the back corner…if you want…when you’re out.” 

And he was gone, disappearing into the dark like a rat.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a long hiatus I decided to take up this story again. I realized that I didn't like the last two chapters and have decided to re-do them. The story was taking a turn away from what I wanted to do with the characters and some world building. Thanks for sticking with it if anyone reads this.

Chapter 7  
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Slit was dozing uncomfortably in his bunk four weeks after they had done war. He had learned that with broken ribs, everything was painful. Sitting, laying down and even breathing gave him constant pain, and made sleeping very difficult. It was for this reason alone that he even heard the shuffling of feet making their way down the row of bunks along the wall. He opened an eye and in the near dark he could see the figure of a war boy padding his way. He almost dismissed this but he noticed the thick cast on the forearm. He raised his head and squinted. As he came closer, Slit could see he wore no boots and seemed to be looking for something, head swiveling on his long neck.  
Even in the dark he knew it was Nux, and this made him sit up in wonder for neither he nor anyone else he knew had ever seen Nux enter their unit bunkhouse. He was still bruised visibly, dark clouds covering vast portions of his naked torso, and his hair had grown out so far that it laid flat against his head.

Bewildered, he watched Nux come upon his bunk, but his driver’s eyes passed him over entirely for he continued down the line quietly, carefully, and without stopping until he arrived at the bunk third from the back. Muffling a grunt, Slit rolled sorely onto his stomach to keep Nux in sight. His shadowed form came to kneel beside the lower bunk. An arm darted out and covered the mouth of the sleeping war boy. There was no fuss.  
Slit shook his head to clear away any vestige of sleep and propped himself on his elbows for a better angle. The other war boy was sitting up now. Nik. They seemed to whisper for a moment, too far for Slit to overhear. Then Nux slid liquidly into the other boy’s bed and there could be no doubt about what he was doing there. Had it been anyone else at all Slit would have gone right back to sleep and pretended he’d never seen, but he didn’t even consider that now.  
He stayed for a long time, but all Slit could see was the occasional shift in the muddled silhouette the pair of them made in the low light. He felt a twinge in his belly when he caught sight of Nux sitting up, his head lolling back, hands out of sight. Slits mouth hung open in incredulity, feeling perversely voyeuristic yet vaguely indignant. He admonished himself inwardly and laid back down. What did he care what the boy got up to? No. He didn't care. He shut his eyes and willed himself to sleep, to drift off.  
When Nux's feet finally touched the ground with just the slightest tap, Slit's eyes flew open despite himself. He realized he'd been listening hard. Waiting. He kept still until Nux was level with his bed and before he could stop himself, his hand shot out, sending a shock of pain down his ribs. He grasped Nux by the leg. He felt the start of surprise tensing in Nux’s muscles when he gasped softly in alarm. He turned and looked down his nose at Slit, his face changing from an expression of surprise to one of stony defiance. He jerked his leg free and hurried towards the door.

Slit hesitated for a moment, then poked his head out and stared back towards Nik's bunk. No movement. He slipped out of his bed and looked closer. Still. Asleep. How sweet, Slit thought sardonically to himself, Nux'd stayed with him until he passed out. Sleg. Slit's mind was working frantically to rationalize why this nighttime rendezvous was in some way a personal affront on Slit himself, but he failed to explain his own reasoning and gave into dumb impulse. He trotted as quietly and as quickly as he could after Nux.  
   
He caught up with him in the corridor, a fist clenching around his drivers bicep. Nux rounded on him and shook him off angrily.

"Don't!" He spat.  
"What are you doing here?" Insisted Slit.  
"Fuck off! Mind your own business!"

Nux was off again, leaving Slit standing barefoot in the dark. He looked behind him then again at Nux's retreating back. Without any real pretense on which to follow him, Slit's instinct not to make a fucking fool of himself won out and he went back to bed, where he lay awake for a long time before finally fading into slumber an hour before wake up call. When Imperator Jeff's holler resounded in the bunkhouse, Slit was up in an instant, as if he'd just closed his eyes moments before. He felt like shit, but he rose all the same, jamming on his boots and making for the mess hall.

He didn't have long to wait, ignoring the gruel in front of him, until Nux filtered in amongst a crowd of war boys and found a seat. Nik wasn't with him. Nux's stay in the dingy hospital had left him looking unlike the rest of his brothers. Without clay or grease or the uniformly shaved head, Slit almost wouldn't have recognized him. This didn't go unnoticed by Jeff either, who paused his pacing to prod Nux in the back of the head. He bent to issue Nux an order, jerking a thumb in the direction of the shower bay. Nux nodded obediently and laced his fingers into the V8 in deference.

Slit suddenly formed an idea. He spooned porridge into his mouth hastily and handed off his bowl to a passing pup before abandoning the mess hall at a fast pace. He retraced his steps back to the bunkhouse, hoping to intercept Nik on his way. He headed him off coming down a flight of stairs and he threw out an arm to stop him. Nik stepped back in surprise, cowing a bit under Slit's gaze.  
"You're Nik?" Slit asked, as if he hadn't bothered to learn his name.

"Yeah..." Nik replied.  
Slit jerked his head in the direction of the repair bays and grunted "Imperator's looking for you, said to report to your bay."

Nik's eyes flickered toward the mess hall. Slit suspected very much that he would have liked to disregard this missive in favor of food and certain company.  
"Your car's needed on the ground." Slit invented on the spot, adding "Said you're to have it lowered first thing." He was careful not to name said Imperator in case Nik ran into any of them on his way. Nik frowned,  
"Oh...ok...got it."

Slit let him go, watching at a distance to make sure he turned right instead of left. He himself made off toward the shower bay. His plan to catch Nux alone was coming together, because he caught sight of the driver just as he was shouldering through the door to the showers. Slit hung back, estimating how many counts it would take him to undress and soap up. He could hardly storm off again naked and half showered, so he waited.

The unwelcome voice of Rak stole his attention.  
"Ey!" Rak sidled up to Slit. "Good, you can get my head for me." Rak informed him, pointing at the fuzz on his head.  
"Oh!" Slit said in acknowledgment, "Kabul's looking for you." He blurted.  
Rak paused then looked behind him, confused.  
"But I just saw him. At mess, didn't say anything..." Rak puzzled. Dammit.  
"Well I just saw him now and he said he needed you in the bay." Slit lied. "Orders from the Imperator."

Rak seemed to consider this, and finally, shrugging, he took off. Slit wiped a hand over his face, imagining a group of war boys all milling around the repair bay arguing over orders from a mysterious Imperator and lowering cars not on the lift schedule, per Slit's word. Fucking perfect. This was a stupid idea, but since he had already bought himself a lot trouble and a little time, he carried on with it.  


In the showers, he shed his pants and boots carelessly and tossed them aside, locating Nux under a shower mount. He was holding his cast out of the spray and wiping soap out of his eyes with his free hand. Slit casually approached the next tap and turned it on, stepping into the water. As always, water was a welcome luxury and he cupped his hands to drink from them out of habit of thirst. When he looked up Nux was glaring at him.  
"Did you follow me?" He demanded irritably.

"No, but it's lucky for you that I'm here, you need a shave. Imperator's orders." Slit replied, and for once this morning it was true.  
He held Nux's glare, gauging how much he could intimidate Nux into obeying him anymore. Nux looked away first, fuming. He rubbed himself down, fingernails scraping at leftover blood and hospital grime. Slit soaped himself as well and was almost finished when Nux turned off the tap. But before he could slip away, Slit pointed a finger in his face and commanded,  
"Wait. You wait for me.”

Nux didn't answer but Slit was unsurprised to find him waiting and clothed, leaning on the industrial sink next to the barrels of clay, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. He pulled on his own pants, the water sticking them to his skin as he wondered exactly what it was he was going to say now that he’d cornered Nux in a bathroom to hear it.

He came up with nothing, so he picked up a razor and jerked his elbow, indicating an old unusable toilet that substituted for a barber's chair.  
Nux sat and Slit found a bit of soap, which he rubbed into Nux's wet hair with his fingers.

In the sensibility of daytime, Slit could hardly confront the other man about his private activities. He settled on a neutral topic,  
"Repairs're coming on nice." he offered. Nux looked back at him in the cracked mounted mirror on the wall and nodded. He scratched at his face with finger where a patchy beard was beginning to grow, looking uncomfortable. His arm was still encased in a dingy looking cast, that had begun to fray over time. 

“I know. Saw it."  
"How long have you been out?" Slit asked, lining up the straight razor and making a few small swipes against Nux's skull.  
"Last night." Nux closed his eyes as the razor scraped away a long swatch of hair. Slit ran his thumb over the sutured cut on his head above his ear, causing Nux to lean away. A small lump was visible nestled in the high hollow of his collarbone. Slit looked at it, and then poked it.  
"Yeah there's that, too." Nux explained, pressing his lips together.  
Slit had watched a lot of men die soft, sometimes months and sometimes years after the first bumps appeared. Several years ago had one grow large on the back of his ear until the organic cut it out. Ugly scar. Almost every one of the oldest war boys were spotted with them. Ace was riddled with them and he was still on his feet.  
"Knew it." Nux spat, "Knew it was my time then. Organic found them when I came back. Gonna die soft."

Slit rolled his eyes.  
"Hey. It's not all about you, you know." Growled the lancer. "When it's your time, it's your time, but you can't go all fucicima at the first chance you get. You need to do your job, can't do that if you're dead."  
Nux was listening, so he went on.  
"You go until you can't anymore. Nothing shiny about wrecking a working part. You're not broken.  
Nux seemed to think on this for a while as Slit finished shaving off his hair and came around to stand before him. He pulled an unopened barrel of clay towards him and sat facing his driver. They looked at each other, the unspoken events of the past few months hanging heavy between them.

 

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Nux was reminded forcefully of the night before as Slit's hand came up to clutch his jaw. When Nik had done it Nux had turned his head into the touch, mouthing and nipping at his fingers. When Slit did it, he didn't move, as his other hand was holding a razor instead of Nux's hard on.  
Loamy soap got in his mouth as Slit turned his head this way and that, swiping at his face with the blade. He pushed out a glob of bitter soapy spit and Slit brushed it away casually with his thumb, following it with the razor. This made Nux squirm a little.  
Slit's concentration allowed Nux time to study the lancer's clayless face without notice. Slit had a wide jaw and his brows were low over narrow eyes. His mouth was lax now, the immense scar was discolored and jagged. It wasn't a very neat scar but that made it even more chrome. Nux reached out and prodded at one of the staples curiously.  
"Did that hurt?"  
"Yes."  
"Can they come out?"  
Slit reached up and pried at the strip of metal with a fingernail, popping it out. Deep divots remained, the result of flesh healing itself around the metal fastenings.  
"Left them in for too long, and now they just fit there." He demonstrated by hooking the staple back into its hole, first one side then the other.  
"That's chrome." Said Nux. "Did you do it yourself?"  
"Nope."  
"Who did?"  
"A buzzard. Fell off a car once and got picked up. He's dead now."

Nux was impressed. He'd never known it was a real battle scar. Slit had collected many marks, hand done in a large swath across his stomach. Healed gashes that had been stapled and sutured mutilated his torso. Everyone knew Slit was chrome. Nux hated that Slit made him feel so mediocre. Slit was scraping the last stubble from the drivers face and his thumb lingered on the corner of Nux's mouth, pressing in suggestively. Nux slapped the lancers arm away and stood up, glowering angrily.

“I'm not your bitch.” Nux sneered quietly, looking around the room to make sure no one had heard.

Slit ignored this but stood up to face him. “I'm driving until you're operational.” he told Nux.  
Despite his broken arm, Nux immediately refused,  
“No, I drive that car.”  
Slits eyes trained on his and he spoke as if by forced patience.  
“You're riding. I'm driving.”

Slit turned his back on the fuming driver to began coating himself with stark white clay. Nux's argument was cut short by the sound of drumming. The war boys were being summoned.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's a new Chapter in which the boys go to Gas Town.

Chapter 8  
N---------------------------------------  
Inside the corridors of the citadel Nux was overcome with the smell of ancient dust and human stink. Descending staircase after staircase, the halls were teeming with clay streaked war boys . Nux could tell Slit’s shoulders were tensed with frustration and adrenaline but Nux was beyond caring. He categorically refused to consider not driving his own car. Slit lost patience with him by the time they reached the V8 altar and a brief scuffle ensued between the two partners over possession of the wheel. Slit won by grasping Nux roughly by his casted arm and twisting until Nux howled in frustration and relinquished his prized steering wheel to the older man. 

“You can't even use both your arms!” Spat the lancer, yanking it from his grip and shoving him off.

Slit shouldered his way through the densely packed corridor and when Nux stumbled into his back, he elbowed him away in annoyance. Under the eyes of their brothers Slit resumed a pretense of disdain towards Nux, like he always did when his friends saw them together. Resentment uncoiled in Nux’s belly as Kabul, Rak and several other older members of unit four filtered into the crowd in front of them. and they were carrying rucksacks that clanked and sloshed as they blundered into their brothers or the walls. They appeared to have already worked their way through some of those flasks.

As soon as they saw Slit they stopped to allow him to catch up. Kabul's eyes fell upon Nux, who held back. The larger boy’s mouth crooked in a sneer as his gaze fell upon Nux's broken arm. An automatic knot formed in Nux's guts, and he was forcibly reminded of the years of persecution he'd endured from Kabul on behalf of Slit’s dead driver. He squared his jaw and forced himself to hold Kabul’s gaze. He wanted to believe things were different now. That whatever had taken place between Slit and himself had changed things. Kabul smoothly turned his back upon Nux and addressed Slit.

“Heard they're taking volunteer units to Gas town to trade. I know a pole cat that runs a ring. Come with us. ”

Nux had never been to gas town but if it was like in the citadel, the man who ran the ring took bets on brawls and generally hooked warboys up with the black markets that ran amidst the soldiers of the wasteland. Alcohol and other stimulants were highly in demand, as were weapons, tattoos, and clothing. Most trading in the citadel was bartered with the sour desert liquor that they fermented in their quarters, or the sanctioned grog that was given from their Immortan to his war boys as reward.

A chance to go to gas town was a popular opportunity. Nux's stomach rose a bit at the prospect. He glanced at Slit's fist, holding fast to his wheel and frowned again, not wanting to let the issue go. He felt sure he could handle his ride, his broken arm was almost healed and he prickled with indignation at what the unit would think, when his Lancer took over his own ride that he'd slaved over for years. Slit wasn't paying him any mind, but eyeing Kabul's bag.

Slit tugged on the strap of Kabul's rucksack, making the flasks and bottles chink.  
"Hey. You owe me from last time. Pay up." He ordered.

Kabul seemed to consider it but finally he stepped back out of Slit's reach.  
"No."

"Stop fucking around. I said you owe me!" Slit said, his voice deepening in annoyance.

Kabul looked back and forth from Slit to Nux for a moment, then he seemed to seize upon something for his mouth turned up in a smirk. "I'll give you double what I owe if you beat me in the ring ." He bargained.  
“And if you win?” Slit asked suspiciously

Kabul jerked his thumb towards the steering wheel in Slit's fist. “I want to drive his car.”

“What!? No!” exclaimed Nux, angrily. Kabul's companions snickered derisively, muttering among themselves. 

“Fine. Half now.” Slit cut over Nux.  
Kabul grinned ingratiatingly and allowed him to pull several flasks and bottles of semi-clear liquor from his rucksack.

Nux glared at Kabul and Slit in turn. Nux almost couldn’t believe Slit would fuck him over like that. He raised his voice, punching Slit hard on the bicep.

“Hey! I said I’m not doing that! He’s not fucking touching my ride!” The young driver was keenly aware of a few of the brothers openly laughing at him. 

Kabul chuckled grimly and gave Nux a patronizing pat on the head, saying “Or you could fight me yourself, Nux.” and he grinned as if the concept was ridiculous. Nux violently batted his hand away and made toward him furiously but Slit jerked him aside by the arm. Kabul and the rest melted into the throng, voices high with mirth as Nux sneered after Kabul, teeth bared.

“He’s not going to win.” Slit said, assuredly.

“You don’t know that!” insisted Nux with frustration, throwing a hateful looks down the hallway at Kabul.

“Look, take this. Get what you need and meet me down there.” And Slit pressed a bottle into his chest. Nux took it and made to argue but Slit was off, leaving him standing alone, holding a plastic bottle of cloudy liquor.  
When he finally turned, he caught sight of Nik, who was hanging back against the wall, watching. Nik too had a worn canvas bag hanging from his shoulder. “Going to gas town?” He asked Nux. 

“Need to get my stuff” Nux muttered, and Nik fell in step with him. In Nux's bay, the car was already gone. The other driver didn't mention it, to Nux's relief. Nux pulled several half full bottles of water and of the cloudy grog from the bottom of a workbench drawer and added them to a sack. Jerking open a different drawer with a metallic screech, he pulled his sawed off double barrel out and stuffed it through a loop on his belt. Several handfuls of shells went into his pockets and he was ready. 

Their boots dredged up the sand as they emerged from the shade of the citadel tower. A caravan was forming with the War Rig in lead. Ace was running his team of war boys through paces, and their chanting could be heard echoing off the walls. Nux and Nik both stared as Imperator Furiosa oversaw their doings with her mechanical prosthetic glinting. She drives...thought Nux angrily. He scanned around for his unit members. Nik peeled away to his ride and Nux approached Slit. He was leaning against the coupe, talking to his friends. Six thundersticks and a heavy black bag of armory lay open on the ground next to Slits own rucksack. Slit twisted around when Nux approached. He nodded toward the pile of armory and turned his back again. 

S------  
Slit could see that Nux's brow was already furrowed in anger and the shadow of the mid day sun cast his scarification into contrast. His eyes were slits. Slit didn't care. Let him do some real lancer's work for once. When he turned away he could hear the clattering of Nux taking up the thundersticks. They weren't likely to need them but you always rode fully loaded. The road to Gas Town would take them the rest of the afternoon to reach. Supply trade caravans traveled only during the dry season. Slit had been to gas town three times as a part of the guard for these runs. They carried a large supply of Aqua Cola, along with weapons, packaged up and stowed inside. Mothers milk, and crops. The citadel is the only land capable of growing large swaths of crops and they paid for the gasoline that fueled the Immortan's army with it.

It was an opportunity for war boys to trade, but also for them to socialize. The Bullet farm and Gas town lived very differently from those in the citidel. And there lay a competitive edge between the companies. Slit had saved up enough spare grog, knives, and two firearms he had harvested from the wars. In the past he had been able to win more in the rings than he lost. Bartering, a warboy could purchase tattoos or brands from men with motorized needles, food, and dope in the form of white powder that the soldiers loved to inhale or rub in their mouths or pills that made you numb, and other things too. Slit had seen some women, too diseased to be breeders for anyone, pitiful and skinny, selling sex for booze or water along the edges of the compounds.  
The unloading and reloading of goods would likely take two days and nights. His unit around him were loading quickly now, because drums erupted over the chanting and shouting and Furiosa was revving the war rig's engine. He checked to make sure Nux had loaded the lancers pit, and he found he had, omitting Slit's personal rucksack, which lay in the sand. Nux himself was hanging his legs off the back of the lancers pit, drinking from the bottle Slit had given him. 

Slit got in, settling himself in the seat. He fitted the steering wheel in. In the rear mirror, he could see Nux watching him darkly. The caravan was moving, and Nux swung up to hold his hands in the sign of the V8 as Imperator Jeff rolled to the front, calling his men. Slit peeled out as they left the citidel behind. The day was cloudless and hot, and both men in the coupe were already dripping with sweat. Nux had donned his goggles and was already drinking. For the first half hour, he added his screaming to the riot of noise the excited throng was creating. Several times Nux shot off his gun into the air, apparently for fun.

As the sun moved over the sky and they lost sight of the Citidel, the war boys eventually bored of rallying and slunk down through sunroofs to sit out the journey. Slit noticed that Nux stubbornly chose to crouch in the lancers pit with his half empty bottle, mopping his sweat away with a rag. This suited Slit fine. He was fed up with the young driver and didn't mind at all that he didn't speak to him. Wedging a bottle cap between his teeth, Slit pried it off the bottle and took a great drag from it. He felt satisfied for the moment that Nux knew his place, and he grinned to himself as he pressed his boot down onto the gas,pressing the coupe forward.

Sunset fell and the skies darkened to a red haze where Gas Town came into sight on the horizon. After hours of waiting, the boys were restless, and cheers and calls rang out as white bodies emerged from the cars and hung from the roofs to see the bridge. They were approaching a bottle neck as the caravan came to halt ahead and Slit drove his boot into the break pedal bearing Nux's inscription. The car ground to an abrupt stop behind the line, throwing the younger man against the back window. Nux crawled up onto his belly to hang into the sunroof.

“What's happening?” he asked, raising his goggles. His eyes were a bit out of focus and Slit wondered if he had been asleep or if he was just drunk.  
“There's only one way to get into gas town.” replied Slit, as the guiding car preceded the war rig onto the bridge spanning a polluted, stagnant moat surrounding Gas Town. It's surface glistening with oil in the remaining light and old wreckage could be seen protruding from the muck. Smog filled the air from the huge towers emitting flames and black smoke from within the city. The barren land that surrounded Gas Town was ignited in a number of burning columns. Slit watched Nux's face in the mirror as he took it all in, his mouth slackening momentarily, the low light reflecting in his wide blue eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, the boys stay at gas town. Nux does drugs, gets in fights, and chases glory.

N------  
Nux hung off the side of his coupe, staring down from the bridge that they were crossing in a slowly moving queue. He could see gas town boys milling about, waiting to receive the war rig and the spoils she carried. Other civilians could be seen gathering to stare at the edge of the moat. His brothers shouted to the gas town boys and they whooped back and waved them in. As they drew into the town, the flamers and polecats sat atop their own rides. They wore black pants and many wore ragged black shirts and vest. Many things in gas town were black, Nux was discovering. Everything was covered with a thin layer of grease and dust. He made the sign of the V8 in greeting and the gas town boys returned it. The air was so thick that most of the war boys had pulled scarves over their faces.

Unloading the first round of cargo took into the night and by the time they had finished the sky was black and the only lights were the burning furnaces and lanterns that turned gas town a glowing orange. Great cement and steel buildings rose up the town all centered around a main tower, where the People Eater lived. They parked their caravan in a large lot where the gas town boys vehicles were stored, in great rows beside the oil field.  


Slit immediately ditched Nux in the lot, leaving him to find his own way to the action. Nux followed the crowd, gawking around as he went. Civilians mulled the streets. Gas town wasn't governed as strictly as the Citedel regarding class separation, Nux realized. Street urchins congested the roads along with soldiers and workers, who paid them little mind, except to comment occasionally on a girl in rags, leaning against the wall. Nux couldn't help but stare open mouthed as he passed these women. War boys weren't forbidden from breeding, but civilians weren't allowed into the towers, so they rarely came in contact with women. All the breedable women were spoken for by higher ranked operators anyway. Nux was stricken by this difference as he watched two war boys eagerly approaching one. The darker the alley, the less clothes these girls seemed to have. Some of them were lacking limbs, many lacked teeth. Most were half life.

Nux was openly leering at a woman standing back between two buildings with her breasts exposed when Nik's voice surprised him from behind.  


“Glory...” Nik muttered, catching up with Nux and turning to stare at the creature in the alley.

“Do you know where you're going?” Nux asked.

“Mostly, I came a year ago. Got this.” Nik said pointing at his chest, where a neat gear pattern had been branded. Nux vaguely remembered being told that before. It was a chrome scar.  
You should have one done.” Nik suggested. Nux frowned, considering.

Nik pointed ahead, “There's the rings.”

War boys and gas town boys stood around two rings set at the intersection of two wide streets. Bags lay open on the ground and bottles were being traded for small dirty bags. They passed two war boys counting over many bottles in exchange for an assault rifle, which was slipped surreptitiously to the warboy's bag. A crowd was starting to build around one of the rings. Two men appeared to be facing off while the crowd cast bets, bottles trading hands.

A war boy from another unit, Nux didn't know his name, was pacing across from a beefy polecat, who wore a ragged vest and had blue and black tattoos all up and down his arms and chest. They collided and the war boy hit the slower man several times in the face before the man recovered and drove his shoulder into his opponent, knocking his breath out. He managed a couple more hits before the polecat grasped him in a choke hold. No amount of thrashing and kicking dislodged him and the war boy tapped out in shame, gasping. Cries of “Mediocre!” and exasperated cursing and another round of bottles changed hands. Nux was starting to understand how everything worked here.  
Nik was edging away and Nux discretely scanned the crowd for Slit. He didn't see him. Nux felt heat rise to his face as the day replayed in his mind and his anger at the lancer resurfaced. He needed to find Slit, before he gave his wheel over to Kabul. Hatred for Kabul, Slit and the rest of their gang boiled in his stomach. Nik was greeting another man in unit 4 and Nux followed the two away from the ring. Nik and his friend approached a vendor on the street, an old civilian man, sitting on a tarp with a hotplate and a metal slab of raw meat. Nux couldn't tell what it was, but learned that for a full bottle of aqua cola he could buy a fair amount. They all crouched on a crowded set of stairs to eat. Nik's friend, as it turned out, knew a man here that sold dope. Nux had seen older war boys with the white powder. They inhaled it off a line on the edge of a knife or their fingers and it was high octane. Rare though.

Nux followed the older warboy, who's name Nux remembered was Zack. Gas lamps burned in the windows, casting a dreary light into the streets that they wound through. Nux knew they had come to the right place when a small crowd of drunk war boys were handing bottles to a large flamer, as another pulled small pieces of twisted plastic from his vest pockets, distributing it carefully and counting bottles. Nik and Nux pooled their resources and traded the man for two measures of white powder.

Zack had to show him what to do. Nux felt awkward. He watched Nik and Zack take out pocket knives, and squatting against a wall, they carefully applied powder to the knife and snorted it off. Nux copied them. Immediately, he got a head rush and had to shake his head briskly. His nose burned and he cleared his throat over and over of the bitter taste in the back of his mouth. He could feel his heart pumping loud in his ears. He did it again.

Zack looked at the other warboys, nodding.

“Glory me...yeah tha's chrome” Nux muttered

They stood up and began their way back. Nux could see their eyes were dilated and he felt the need to keep moving his limbs. He felt like he was bouncing as they made their way back to the rings.

The crowd was thick now, and the yelling had reached a fever pitch. Nux blearily scanned the crowd for Slit. He had to find him soon before he lost the wheel to Kabul. Nux imagined Kabul driving his coupe and flared up internally. What if he tried to keep it? What was he afraid of? The drug in his system had him feeling high octane. Nik passed him a bottle, and he drank.

The crowd seemed to crackle and swim around him in his haze. He was sweating. He ground his teeth together as he needled through to the crowd to get close to the ring. Nik saw him before Nux did, and elbowed him in the ribs,

“It's Slit...and Kabul.” he pointed to the opposite edge of the ring, where the man who ran the ring counted bottled between the two Unit 4 war boys. Nux could tell Slit was loaded by the way he moved. The lancer was rolling his shoulders and shifting his weight from one boot to the other. Kabul removed his scarf and threw it to the ground. Slit followed him into the ring. Nux drew closer to see. The war boy taking the bets called out the terms. Nux cursed when the man held up the steering wheel decorated with a masked skull. In his stupor, Nux reflected grimly on how little regard Slit and the rest showed him. Slit had no right to barter off Nux's belongings; he wasn't a corpse yet. His heart was pumping. He was allowing it it happen, he thought. Like a cunt. He was better than that, he told himself.

The two older men squared off and the ring leader fired a pistol into the air. Men whooped and shouted. Nux clenched his fist in his cast. He wasn't feeling any pain now.

Kabul stumbled and beat his chest. He was very drunk, and his head swiveled on his massive shoulders. Nux couldn't tell if Slit was smiling, or if it was just the way the light was casting his scar into contrast. He was concentrating on Kabuls fists. The men charged. Slit roared with determination and landed several hard blows to Kabul's head right away, but Kabul seized his scarf and attacked Slit's injured ribs with studded lancers gloves. Slit snarled in pain and jerked back. The crowd moved in around him and he was forced to step forward. Slit's eye caught his from the ring.

Slit-----

It distracted the lancer momentarily when he clocked his driver stepping out from the crowd. His face was seething. Kabul took his chance and hit Slit so hard in the eye that it knocked him to one knee.  
“Get Up! Slit Get up!” he heard Nux's furious voice amidst the roar of the crowd. He shook his head, and made himself stand up. Kabul was flagging under drink and fatigue, and he'd taken head shots too. Slit could do this. His right eye was swelling already, pain blooming over his face. He lashed out with his boot suddenly and brought it down on Kabuls left knee. Kabul threw punches but it brought him down. Slit caught two more painful blows to the ribs before he managed to wrestle the other lancer to the ground. His boots scrambled in the sand, his hands around Kabul's throat. Kabul wouldn't tap out. He squeezed. Encouragement was pouring in from the frenzied onlookers, including Nux, who Slit knew was only interested in getting back his wheel.

Kabuls face was purple from lack of oxygen, and his struggle became weak. The ring leader called out. It was over.

Slit rose up and held his hands up in victory in the sign of the V8. People poured into the ring to shame the loser and pay the winner. Slit was on high. HIs back was turned and he barely had time to register Rak's surprised warning before a fist connected with the side of his head. Light exploded his field of vision and he felt himself go down on his knees. Nux was on him in an instant, and the roar of onlookers drowned out his string of disjointed profanity. Blows rained down about Slit's shoulders and head. He felt his lip bust against knuckles.

Slit wheeled around, confused and spitting blood. Nux! 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Slit roared over the jeering of the war boy's. There was a ringing in his ear but he made out most of Nux's disordered tirade.  
"Fuck you Slit! Fuck you! Give me my wheel! It's my car!” Nux's eye were dilated and lips were pulled away from his teeth.  
He blocked Nux's jabs at him until the drivers strength flagged for a fraction of a moment and then he didn't hesitate. His fist connected with the kid's jaw and his teeth cracked together audibly. It stunned the young driver and he took several clumsy steps back, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. The crowd was enraptured with the drama unfolding before them and the brothers screamed for violence. 

Peals of derisive laughter spilled from Kabul, who called out “Fight Slit! Fight him! Put him down Slit!”

“Nux! You're a dead man!” Slit growled dangerously. His face was drawn in a snarl now, and he could feel anger pulsing in his viens, he shoved Nux hard in the chest. He stumbled backwards but didn't lose his balance. It Gave Slit time to breath. Nux was gasping through his teeth, his eyes dilated and darting. Slit eyed Nux's broken arm.

“Come on!” Slit snarled mockingly, and spit some blood out that was seeping from his nose into his mouth. Nux  
For a moment, Nux hesitated, shifting his weight and gathering his strength.

Slit saw Kabul step out behind Nux, who's eyes were fixed on Slit's face. Kabul shoved Nux between the shoulder blades towards Slit, and at this Nux spun around in alarm , when he saw who had shoved him his face registered blind rage before he was upon Kabul like an animal. He rammed his shoulders into the stomach of the older man, catching him by surprise and collapsing them both to the ground.

The crowd fell silent in surprise but flared up again immediately at the new contest. This fight was escalating into a riot. 

Kabul struck out at the kid, tearing into him. They grappled viciously, but fueled by rage, Nux was quicker, His hand grasped out across the floor, where he found a chunk of broken cement. He brought it down on Kabuls temple hard. Kabul Lay stunned in the dust. Nux seemed as if he were going to hit him again, and Slit took the opportunity to grab him by his broken wrist and drag him off. With his free hand Nux punched Slit in his blackening eye twice. Slit roared in pain and with massive strength he brought an elbow down on Nux's shoulder, flattening him. He flipped Nux onto his stomach and pinned him, driving his face into the ground with his palm.

Finally regaining control of his ring, the leader called the fight in Slits favor, though the crowd seemed to favor Nux for his guts. 

 

N---------------------  
Nux lay in the dirt, bleeding. His tongue had been bitten hard, and his lips were busted. His arm did hurt now. He was satisfied to see Slit, kneeling in the dust, had blood covering is face and chest. It drooled from his nose and bottom lip into his hands. He rubbed them against his pants and wiped his face with his scarf. The leader handed Slit his rucksack full of winnings, and Nux's wheel. This caught him but by the time he was on his feet, Slit was holding it out to him. He snatched it, peering at slit from under his eyebrows. He'd earned it. Even Slit seemed to think so. The crowd liked this and came forward to offer drinks and congratulations. It had been a great fight. Nik was at his elbow.

“Fucking cunt! What the hell were you doing? You knocked him out cold!” Nik effused, looking over his shoulder at Kabul, who was sitting up finally.

Nux could only nod and laugh deliriously a little, gazing around at all the soldiers looking at him. 

“You need to get a brand. A fucking shiny one Nux!” Nik said. Nux was nodding. Yeah, someone said, yeah. 

He let a small gaggle of soldiers and Nik lead him away. He gripped fast to his wheel. Nik was telling him about a guy who did brands, really chrome. Nux stumbled and sloshed a mouthful of grog around his bloody mouth. A trail of people were with them. Nux was feeling dizzy. They rounded a corner and approached a brightly lit corner. There Nux was introduced to a man wearing thick black gloves, and scarf over his face. He was tattooing another war boy in the pattern of a skull on his stomach.  
“You're next up, what ya want?” asked the man with the tattoo gun. 

Nux thought. He looked at his wheel. A skull? No, something really chrome. A car? No, the V8!

“I want the V8, here on me chest.” Nux decided. Nik and others nodded approvingly. Momentarily it was his turn. Nik and several other war boys ponied up bottles to pay the man. They were just short and Nux was about to pay the remainder with his spoils, when Slit appeared over Niks head. Nux glared warily up at him from where he was seated on the ground. 

“I'll pay it.” Slit offered looking at Nux with an unreadable expression. Nux nodded hesitantly. He supposed Slit was here to cause trouble, but maybe he just wanted to see him in pain.  
Nux chose a brand. After Slit had counted out enough, the gloved man brought out a set of forged metal tools. Some were just rods with wrapped leather handles but others were shaped like circles, gears, grills and other shapes. Skin stamps. Nux kept a look of apprehension off his features. He wasn't afraid, he was ready to go. 

The tattooist was tracing in black charcoal on his chest. He picked up one of his tools and held it in the flame of the gas lamp on a barrel. Slit came to kneel beside him, and someone held a bottle up to his mouth as the iron came in contact with his skin. “Hnng!” Nux groaned and grasped the tattooist's hand in pain.

“Hold his arms” said the gloved man lazily.

Slit slid in behind him, and tugged his arms up to hold them behind his back. Nux hissed as the iron was pulled away. A long strip of flesh was burned off, leaving a smoking red gash. Nux nodded and managed a small grin. He gave the artist a shaky thumbs up.  
Slit's grip tightened on his biceps every time the red hot iron was pressed against his chest causing Nux to writhe. Nux didn't scream out but he couldn't help but groan in agony. It was exquisitely painful. Even his brothers looking on wrinkled their noses in empathy when his flesh sizzled audibly. 

It took a long time. Once or twice a war boy would dash liquor on it and it would sting unbearably. They supposed it helped ward off infection. Slit did this now and Nux glanced backwards to see his lancers face peering at him. He looked grotesque. His face was bruised purple and red, and his eye had swollen almost all the way shut. The bit of visible eye had turned red where it was supposed to be white, and the blue iris seemed off center. Slit looked away coolly. 

Nux felt as if he was going to black out soon. He became quiet, his chest rising and falling quickly. His vision was going blurry and his body was overstimulated to it's limits. He thought he felt Slit's thumb dig into the space between his shoulder blades. Maybe it was an accident. He didn't know. He didn't know anything. The open wound on his chest was appalling. He stared in disbelief at what he had just done to himself. He felt so shiny. He had won. He had won this time. His head was swimming...


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

S---------  
It was several moments before anyone could bring Nux around. Slit left him to his friends, slipping away in the aftermath back the way he'd come. At the rings Slit drank until late in the night, his eye throbbing, and his body aching. Nux had held his own very well and although Slit hated to be challenged by him, he was impressed.

Slit knew Nux had made himself an enemy in Kabul. In fact, Kabul had refused to acknowledge Slit and sat sulking on a barrel by the ring, scratching a cut on his head and downing grog. It was when Slit noticed Kabul's mutinous gaze follow someone across the square did Slit turn and see Nux. 

His outstretched arm was scraping his cast along the wall to keep him from falling over and his good arm grasped his wheel.

Slit waited a few moments before edging away from the group. He did not want anyone to know that he was following Nux. He'd lost him by the time he'd turned down the alley after him but he bet that Nux was going back to the coupe. He decided to wait there.

It took awhile to find their ride in the sea of vehicles. He collapsed in the lancers pit and drained a bottle of aqua cola nearly to the end. It was four hours, Slit guessed, until it would be light again. They were expected at the loading dock soon after sunrise. He was considering closing his eyes and falling asleep by the time he heard dragging footsteps approach.

Nux looked like a demonic apparition out of the smog. His burnt, bloody chest stood out red against his white torso. Slit sat up. Nux caught sight of him and he came to stand unsteadily before Slit.

“You look terrible...the fuck is wrong with your eye?” Nux slurred.

Slit brought a hand up to prod gingerly at his eye socket. It was tender and hot to the touch. He couldn't see right out of it.

“You hit me.” Slit told him.

“You bet my wheel!” Nux scoffed, indignantly, his fist closing tightly around it, his brows furrowed in anger.

“He wasn't going to win, even you could wreck him.” Slit said with a dismissive jerk of his head. “I was going to give it back anyway.”

“He was Mediocre!” Nux spat, a smug smirk playing on the edges of his mouth. “What are you doing here?”

Slit didn't reply, because he hadn't really come here to talk. He stood up and Nux took a few drunken steps back until Slit had steered him against the coupe. Nux's instinct was to jerk the wheel out of Slit's reach.

“Not here for that.” He told Nux quietly.

“What do you want, then?” his driver asked suspiciously.

Slit moved in, much too close.

Nux was watching his face warily but he didn't push the older man away. His pale eyes glinted beneath their black greased sockets. Nux's bruised mouth was dark and swollen. His heavy fatigues hung from slim hips. He was bristling at Slit's proximity. He looked like a cornered animal, dangerous and vulnerable. Slit wanted him.

Careful to act slowly (no sudden moves) Slit brought a hand up and ran his fingertips across Nux's chest, the pads of his fingers catching slightly on the tacky open wound. Nux hissed loudly and pulled his lips away from his teeth in pain. Slit watched him, waiting for the backlash if he was wrong. Nux appeared to be frozen in place however, staring at Slit's hands. Nux jerked involuntarily and his breath hitched as calloused fingers chaffed over the V8 brand.

Slit's tone was low when he broke the silence, “You like this don't you?”

Nux looked intensely embarrassed, as he had during their previous encounters of this sort, but Slit could feel the heat coming off of him. Hours ago, he'd fought viciously, and now it seemed he had him pinned again. It gave Slit immense pleasure to think he could bend this warrior to his will.

Nux looked around the parking lot self consciously. “No... I don't know...” He muttered.

“No one's going to see.” Slit insisted. His fingers dug beneath his drivers waistband.

Nux was either too drunk or too hard up to resist. Slit's fingers were moving clumsily over the belt and fastenings, ripping them open. Nux was straining against the fabric, not meeting Slits eye. Slit freed Nux's cock and slowly rolled the kid's foreskin down over the weeping head.

Nux was watching slack-jawed. He ran the pad of his thumb around the slick tip, spreading pre-cum. He tightened his hold, stroking, and another droplet formed. Slit was watching Nux's face. He was blushing furiously and his fingers gripped fast to the car's windowsill. They were both unsteady on their feet, but Nux was panting, slouching against the car and bucking his hips awkwardly into the lancer's grip.

Slit allowed Nux to dictate the rhythm. He tilted his head, examining Nux's scar, fascinated. Impulsively he dipped his head and dragged his tongue along the fresh wound, tasting iron. This made Nux groan and twist in discomfort but his head fell back against the coup with a dull thud. He was breathing faster. Slit could feel Nux's pulse in his erection. Slit stopped and pulled his hands away, stepping back. Nux let out a loud sigh of frustration.

“Why'd you stop?” he complained, grimacing and palming his own hard on in desperation.

“Let me fuck you.”

There was a pregnant pause but Nux shook his head. “No...” Nux was grasping his belt and pulling up his pants. “No, not after last time.”

Last time. A tide of guilt rose in the pit of his stomach. Slit realized that it had been settling in him for longer than he could admit. He'd had hated Nux then. But he had wanted him like he did now.

It was abruptly imperative to Slit that Nux didn't go. Not yet.

“ Wait! Wait...” Slit insisted, his hands closing around Nux's wrists. “I'll make it good. I'll make it good for you.” Slit promised, casting an embarrased glance over his shoulder. 

Nux gave him a withering look.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Slit didn't know, so he crushed his mouth against Nux's. Their teeth clashed together and Slit was struck with the startling complexity of spit and blood and something chemical. Nux tasted like the wasteland. 

N--------

When he pulled away Slit looked just as confused as Nux felt. What was this? He couldn't reconcile the brutal war boy he'd come to know with whatever had just happened. It felt like a trap.

"Don't. Don't do that." Nux slurred. Blood thrummed in the vein in his neck from anger and humiliation. 

Slit looked at him and the expression on his face was strange. Something in him seemed to extinguish and he released Nux's wrists and took a slow, deliberate step back. 

"Ok...yeah...ok." he muttered, as if to himself. He peered at Nux, his head tilted to favor his good eye. For a moment it seemed as if wanted to say something, but he turned on his heel and left Nux standing alone, his boots crunching on the gravel.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11  
N---------------------------------  
The scar on Nux's chest hardened over and healed. His cast had finally come off, much to his satisfaction, but Nux awoke one morning for the second time in months with a twinging pain in his collarbone. He fingered it irritably and rolled over on the floor of the car bay. The light was dull and the air smelled unusual. He sat up squinting, and wondered if the persistent aching of the lumps on his neck had woken him up earlier than usual. Stiffly, he rose to his feet and walked towards the great bay window. Clouds were crusting the edge of the horizon and a thin smog turned the sun opalescent. Nux knew this smell. It was rain. 

Just thinking about the water rain brought made Nux's mouth feel as dry as sand. Excitement pulsed in his veins, even though this meant the war boys would go nowhere, and pack inside to do menial detail. Rain was a glorious relief anytime it came, and the civilians would all gather against the citadel to catch the water that streamed off the rocks. Aqua cola falling from the sky.

Once when Nux was very young a storm came through like few alive had seen before. The sky had turned black, and thunder rumbled for days on end, and the rain fell and fell. At first several slow trickles of muddy water had crept through the lowest roads, but those streams became wide and within several days water came up even to the lower level of the citadel. War boys had worked frantically, pulling machinery and supplies up off the ground floor, and from the higher towers, They'd watched the wretched clamoring in shoulder deep water, crowded from the higher ground. Many of them drowned by the time it was over. 

Nux took his time at breakfast, knowing that the sooner he was done the sooner he would be assigned to cleaning guns or hauling drums of one thing or another. It was busy work and it was never done. By the time war boys were convening in units around the great wheel, the sky was darkening and they could see curtains of rain across the great flat land pouring on distant rocks. There was a musky humidity in the halls and the howling winds blew warm moist air through the passages between the citadel towers. The pale bodies of his comrades dotted the windows of adjacent towers. Everyone was preoccupied with watching the skies. 

At the great wheel, chains extended from the hulking and intricate gear systems. Monkey like, the younger children scrambled into the rafters, filling the platforms with excited chatter. Unit four usually gathered at one of the left hand side lifting palettes but when he arrived he saw that Imperator Jeff was deep in conversation with the Ace. They were casting glances and pointing towards the east, and Nux approached as closely as he dared and hovered there trying to overhear. 

“A signal? Who would be out there? That's hostile territory.” asked Jeff in a low voice.

“He said it was a citadel flare.” Ace told him, and passed a brass telescope to the Imperator. 

Jeff moved as far as the platform would allow and peered out over dunes. He scanned slowly, and paused facing east. “I see... one car...no men. It's hard to tell.” Jeff reported dispassionately.

“If we send a scouting party we need to go soon.” Ace insisted.

“Could be buzzards in the area.” Jeff said doubtfully. Nux could tell he didn't want to send a crew into hostile territory before the storm. But who could have sent a flare? 

“If our men are stranded they'll find them. And the car.” Ace reasoned.

Jeff grimaced and swiveled around to look for his crew. Nux turned slightly a pretended to be looking elsewhere. He saw more of unit four had arrived. Nik was standing with his lancer Sid, and Slit waited with Morsov, Rak and Kabul. He made eye contact with Slit momentarily but cut their gaze to go stand with the other driver. 

He'd just finished explaining to Nik what he'd seen when Imperator Jeff called for them. The ten members of unit four came to stand around him and he told them, 

“We got orders to go check out a flare signal that was sent up from the rocks to the east. I want to get this done fast, so five of you come with me, and the rest of you report to weapons repair.” 

Unit four erupted in argument with Nux included. Everyone volunteered loudly and simultaneously until Jeff silenced them with a shout. He pointed into their faces seemingly at random and he chose, 

“Rak... Sid. Nik... Slit... Nux.”

Rak grinned smugly at Kabul who looked extremely put out. Jeff explained that because of the mud, they would lower the Mack. Impatiently, Jeff shouted for the wheel rats to get moving. Gradually the gears shifted into motion with a series of loud creaks and they stepped onto the broad platform. It lurched beneath Nux's feet and they were lifted into the bay. Imperator Jeff retrieved the Mack and they directed him onto the lift. For the slow descent down, Nux clung to a chain and watched the horizon rise. 

Slit was holding onto the grill of the Mack and squinting off into the distance. At least he appeared to be because his right eye had never returned to normal. Apparently the retina had become detached, which Nux didn't understand but he could see that it was fucked up. It was a matter of debate over whether Nux or Kabul had dealt the defining blow, but either way a grisly opaque scar had grown over the blue iris and the white bits remained bloody red. Slit looked over at him. Nux stared steadily back. Slit had kept his distance and maintained an impassive attitude towards Nux. It hadn't been entirely unpleasant but Nux wondered what it meant. 

Several months out now, it seemed unlikely the Slit would enact any sort of revenge on Nux for attacking him. Crazily, he had even considered trying to find him some nights after a bottle or two, but Nux had decided against it every time with a flush of shame. He looked away, suddenly abashed as he recalled how Slit had come onto him, kissed him, even. He had been mulling it over, and pondered the possibility that Slit could have been genuine in some way that he didn't understand. It hurt his head to think about. Nux gave his head a little jerk to clear it. He couldn't worry about that now. The Platform hit the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust with a loud dull thump. It wasn't raining yet but the air was very still and the rolling clouds were approaching fast. 

The war boys piled toward the Mack, and wrestled over who would claim the two seats inside. By the time Nux had lost out his seat to Sid, and Slit had wrestled Rak out of the cab, Imperator Jeff was visibly impatient. As a matter of course, two drums of guzzoline were loaded aboard and Jeff was ready to go. 

“Get on!” He roared, and Nux, Nik and Rak pulled up onto the back. Nux braced against a harpoon and Jeff rode hard to the east. Nik hung on next to him.  
“What's he so worried about?” Nik asked no one in particular.  


Nux turned around to see that he meant Jeff, who was chewing the insides of his cheeks with brows deeply furrowed. He did look nervous. Nux shrugged.

“Don't know who it is, but they had a distress flare.” Nux told him. 

“Who would have been out on patrol so early?” Nik wondered.

A raindrop splattered on Nux's back and then the sky opened up in earnest, distracting them. His comrades were all tilting their faces upwards, exclaiming, and catching drops on their arms. By the time they came within close sight of the stranded car the rain fell steadily, but Nux didn't mind. The dust was turning to pasty mud underneath his boot when he dismounted. 

The abandoned car was black and nondescript. Jeff killed the motor and stepped out in front, surveying. It was a car, alone. They surrounded it, peering inside. There were no weapons, no guzzaline drums. Nux didn't recognize it as a citadel vehicle, but he couldn't be sure. Before the the rocks rose up and parted in the middle to form a crevasse about the size of a small road. A brown stream of water trickled from it's mouth, soaking the ground. Jeff grimaced and waved them forward. Rak and Slit hastened to march in front. 

They scanned the rocks for a clue as to who had sent the distress signal. The water ran up over the toes of their boots. They all went quiet with a wave of Jeff's hand. Apprehension crept through their collective.

“I heard something.” Rak muttered.

Nux was listening hard now. A voice. Did he hear a voice? The others were murmuring in assent, they had heard something. A war boy, marooned?

“Lets go, but keep your eyes open.” ordered Jeff. 

As they traveled further into the crevasse, the stickier the mud got, and rocky debris piled higher against the sides, forcing them into a single file, boots squelching. 

He didn't notice immediately through the sound of falling rain but small pebbles were rolling down the face of the cliff, hitting Nux's shoulders. He saw Slit up ahead look up, searching for the source. A blast suddenly split the air, shaking the ground and sending everyone into a panic. They were all shoving as deep in the earth a horrible cracking echoed loudly off the walls around them. 

Nux watched in horror as the side of the cliff began to come away in a wave of water and crushed rock. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Clots of mud were falling on their heads. The landslide was forcing them away from where they'd come, so they advanced hurriedly forward into the crevasse. They almost managed to escape the worst of the cascade, but for the the forsaken mud, gushing around their ankles. They were slipping and falling and their feet adhered for just a moment too long, allowing the earth to bury their boots. Nux felt Nik pushing into him as a great torrent of dirt rained down on them, obscuring everything. 

He gasped in a lungful of dirt and dust and doubled over coughing. He was vaguely aware of the pounding of feet on the plateau above. They sounded closer and Nux was certain he heard the cadence of a foreign tongue. This was a trap! His brothers' voices were a jumbled cacophony around his shoulders. The walls were going to fall in and there was nothing anyone could do. Rocks were smashing into him, larger now and bruising. One cracked him on the side of the temple and he crouched down in pain, bringing his arms up to protect his head. He quickly recognized this as a mistake when he found himself immediately buried to the hips in rubble. A hand, he didn't know who's, was pulling his arm, dragging him up. They needed to climb out or they would be buried alive. Nux wrenched his boots free, only to sink again. His heart was thudding in chest. Glory...thought Nux....this could be it. He didn't really want it to end like this, so he fought for everything he was worth. Desperately, he climbed with the tide of sediment and slab coming up around them, his knuckles bloodied, and his soaked clothing weighing him down.

When the landslide diminished to the occasional clattering of stones Nux found himself mostly uninjured. He was a good six feet above where he had started out. He wiped wet gravel out of his stinging eyes, and wrenched himself clear of the mud, tripping immediately on the settling earth. He vaguely registered the slowly stirring bodies surrounding him and he gaped around in a daze until he was startled into clarity by an excruciated scream. 

Nux stumbled forward over a boulder and saw several mud caked bodies moving near Nik, who laid buried waist deep under the rocks, his bloodied face twisted in pain. Nux scurried across the ground, his bruised legs buckling beneath him as he closed in on Nik. Imperator Jeff got unsteadily to his feet, pulling intently on the strap of his AK, which had been looped over his shoulder but remained partially encased in debris. He spared his crew a cursory glance before quickly brushing the dirt off his gun and aiming it at the plateau overhead. He turned in place and held a defensive stance. 

“Get him out! Keep him quiet!” Jeff commanded, his eyes on the hills. Nik was clenching his teeth and groaning in agony. Nux's brain was processing everything very slowly. He looked around. Rak was coming to help him. He didn't see the others. Rak grasped Nik around the arm and Nux pulled the other one and together they heaved Nik out of the rubble. This caused Nik to howl tortuously and dismay washed over Nux as they laid him outstretched on his back. His legs both hung at nauseatingly awkward angles. Nux's hands shook as he took in Nik's injuries. One leg seemed utterly crushed. It was clear by the limp way it hung that multiple breaks had occurred. His other leg was cracked at the shin where a shard of bone strained at the fabric of his fatigues. Nik was muttering incoherently, his voice a pitch higher. His wide eyes were unfocused and streaming in pain and Nux froze to the spot, unsure of what to do. 

“Who's alive? Where is everyone?” demanded Jeff, still casting around for enemies. 

Rak came to his senses first and answered the Imperator, “...We've got Nux an' me...Nik's here...”. Nik cried out in terror as if on cue. “Slit and Sid aren't here!” he concluded. Nux swiveled his head around. Slit wasn't there. 

Reluctantly Jeff lowered his gun from the silent cliffs, and assessed the situation. “Slit?” he called cautiously, “Sid!?”

a groan from about ten feet away responded. It wasn't Slit. Nux scurried towards it anyway and they collapsed to the ground, digging purposefully. They didn't need to go deep before they unearthed Sid, who looked dizzy but conscious enough. Nux scraped the caked on mud away from Sid's face.  
“Sid! Sid!?” Nux shook the limp war boy to attention, “Where's Slit? Did you see him? Did you see where Slit was?” 

Sid croaked and shook his head. “I dunno...what...what happened...?” Nux moaned in frustration and pushed himself up, rapidly scanning the loosened earth. The landslide had collapsed the crevasse inward, blocking them from the mouth of the pass. They were trapped unless they could scale their way out. He took this information in stride and set it aside in the interest of searching for Slit. He spotted a pale arm, protruding to the elbow, the wrist incased in a lancers brace. His breath hitched and he limped quickly towards it.  
“Over here! He's over here!” Nux called, and fell on his knees, his bleeding fingers clawing at the rocks. Rak and Jeff fell in beside him. Bile and panic were rising in Nux's stomach. He grasped Slit's wrist and wrenched upward with all his weight, to no avail. They dug in earnest now, faces grim. The layer of gravel trapping Slit cut their hands, and the fatigued men struggled to roll away the skull sized rock shards. He was trapped on his side and Jeff finally unearthed his face, which was slack. The Imperator leaned in close, listening for breath while the others dug like mad. His body wasn't crushed when they finally pulled him from the dirt. They shook him free of the mud, and Slit took a great gasping breath and began to cough violently. It took several minutes to bring him around but he was finally able to sit up on his own.  


Rak and Jeff were already on their feet, weapons drawn. Rak checked that his revolver was loaded. They were all speaking at once  


“Get up, Slit! We have to move!”  
“They tricked us! It's buzzards!”  
“Why didn't they just gun us down?”  
“They must be out of ammo.”  
“It was a lure! They want the Mack!”  
“They can't get past the trip switch!”  
“Unless they know how to hot wire it...”  
Jeff sneered in fury and rounded on Slit.  


“Get up! Come on! We have to get out of here before they get the truck! Move!” He urged, prodding Slit's side with the toe of his boot. Slit groaned and after several tries he got to his feet. Like the others, he was covered in scrapes and bruises and a large dark red wound seeped on the back of his skull. He spat mouthfuls of dirty saliva out and looked around grimly.  
Nux followed Slit's Gaze and saw that Sid was on his feet, limping towards Nik. They fell silent and followed him, coming to stand around the crippled war boy. Nux and Sid knelt down. Nik wasn't speaking. He lay with his head tilted back, taking shallow breaths through his nose. Jeff glared around at the cliffs and down at Nik with chagrin. Rak and Slit exchanged dark looks.  
Nux was looking from face to face, waiting for a solution. A way out. They could climb out of course but what about Nik...  
Sid wasn't looking at anyone. He silently took in his drivers mangled state, his face wooden. He sat back on his haunches and took Nik's hand in a firm grip.  
“We're gonna try and lift you, yeah?” He told Nik, who's eyes were locked on his, his lips bloodless. The young driver shook his head sharply back and forth.  
“We have to...” Sid insisted, his voice cracking a little.  
Sid nodded at Nux and they both looped an arm around their neck and rose slowly, but it was immediately clear that this caused unbearable pain. Nik bellowed in anguish and before they were even halfway up to a sitting position, Nux could tell something was very wrong by the way his friend's body hung from theirs. He wasn't even trying to hold on, wasn't trying to move at all. It wasn't just his legs. He was dead weight. 

Nux put him down and ran his hands over his head in dismay, letting out a puff of air. 

Nik was gasping and blinking back tears. “Fuck...oh fuck...” he breathed. 

Sid turned to Jeff and said, 

“If we all helped we could carry him.” and his voice barely betrayed a lick of doubt. Nux nodded. The others exchanged another ominous look. 

Jeff squatted down and gingerly pulled away some of the torn fabric from Nik's hip. The skin beneath was already hemorrhaged and purple. Jeff looked up and pointed authoritatively at the lowest section of wall.  
“All of you. Go see if we can climb out from there. Go!”

Rak and Slit turned away immediately but Sid and Nux held back until Jeff barked angrily for them to obey command. The cliff was taller than any of them stood. They gathered several large rocks that took two men to move, and rolled them against the cliff. Sid kept glancing back over his shoulder, expectantly. By the time they had a solid step, Rak, who was tallest, could reach the lip of the cliff. With a boost, he was able to clamor up, and belly over the ledge. From there he could pull up the others. 

Sid opened his mouth to say something, but his voice was silenced by another familiar rattle. Jeff, still squatting over his fallen soldier, had pulled from his utility belt a rusty dented spray can. Nux didn't comprehend it at first, until Sid choked,  
“No! No, wait!”

The hiss of the spray can seemed strangely amplified in the crevasse. Understanding dawned slowly on Nux as Jeff sprayed Nik's mouth chrome. Weakly, the boy laced his fingers together in the sign of the V8, hands shaking.

Nux was running before he had made the decision to do it. Sid was already ahead of him. Nux was pulled up short as a solid arm looped around his waist and wrestled him to his knees. He could only watch as Jeff cocked his handgun, pointed it at Nik's head and pulled the trigger. The single, lonely shot rang out, echoing off the walls again and again and again in Nux's ears. He was certain that sound would never stop inside his head and his stomach lurched. Slit had all his weight pinning Nux on his knees but he was keenly aware of Sid's grievous howl. He struggled to throw Slit off.

“Nux! It's too late! We were never going to be able to carry him out of here!”  
Nux growled like a dog and thrashed against Slit, throwing elbows into his chest, trying to bite any part of him he could reach.

Jeff stood up in time to meet Sid, who was approaching him at full speed. He rounded on his soldier and brought the butt of his gun down hard, sending Sid to the ground. Jeff pressed his boot against Sid's back, holding him fast to the ground. He looked dangerously at each one of them in turn, daring them. Nux and Sid quieted gradually and Slit released Nux, who helped drag Sid to his feet. He felt numb.  
“Witness Nik!” Called Imperator Jeff. 

The comrades made the sign of the V8 and called back, “Witness!” Nux thought his voice sounded strange, as if it belonged to someone else.

Without a backwards glance, Jeff lead his men out of the collapsed canyon and marched them, wet and exhausted, out on the plateau. The way there had taken a fraction of an hour but scaling down from the rock ledges took them four times as long. Imperator Jeff let out a relieved huff when they reached their destination to find the Mack where they left it. It had been stripped of the barrels of guzzaline and the black car was gone. No one spoke as they packed into the truck and peeled off towards the citadel. Nux could feel Slit's eyes on him, but he didn't look, instead glaring bitterly out over the wasteland while the rain continued to fall.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

S------

Slit felt every bump on the road throughout his bruised and battered body. The Mack rattled across the sand, slewing mud out from behind, where Slit slumped beside his driver. Nux was a million miles away as he picked at a particularly embedded shard of rock buried in his forearm.

Slit hadn't much liked Nik, but he found that he didn't take any thrill in watching him die. Losing friends to the wasteland was a matter of course, but war boys rarely acknowledged bereavement. It was a sign of weakness and therefore never rewarded with sympathy. If anything, they envied the dead. A death was only the crossing from this short, grueling existence to eternal glory. There should be no cause to grieve, but Slit had watched men become unhinged due to loss. He'd seen some rush to follow a brother to Valhalla.

The flats before the citadel were dotted with people now. They were all preoccupied with shoveling mud over their pots, using whatever frayed cloth they could spare to filter out the sediment. Desert withered faces spared a glance for the remaining members of Unit four as they passed, slowing to a roll. In the courtyard large drums lay spaced out and the war boys were at work shoveling clay as well. Every possible source of water must be exploited to support the population.

Slit fervently hoped that their work was done for the day. He could tell that Jeff was angry by the jolting way he was handling the mack. When they rolled to a stop, Nux dismounted immediately and took off without a backward glance. He was breaking protocol by not assisting the lift, and Slit jumped down and shouted his name sharply, but he didn't look around. Slit turned to see what how the imperator would react to this. Jeff lurched down from the truck and glared at Nux's back, nostrils flared. Slit made to go after his driver but Jeff waved his hand in irritated dismissal. 

"Leave it." He told Slit with gruff resignation. At this, Sid threw the door of the Cabin open and departed as well. Jeff ran his hands over his face in frustration and grunted for the remaining two to assist. Between Rak and Slit, it took twice as long to raise the Mack, and the sky was darkening to an inky blue. The rain diminished to a drizzle, and fires lit up the towers of the citadel, chiseled windows casting dim light down the walls. Bottles and cans, anything watertight, lined the window ledges and caught the water dripping off the rocks. It had been a dry season up to this point.

Slits fatigues were beige with caked on mud and war boys glanced curiously as him as he passed by with Rak on his heel. The showers were packed with war boys shedding wet clothing from the day. The wait was so long that Slit squatted on the floor and leaned his back on the dewy rocks. His head was pounding and blood still seeped and congealed on his scalp. In the washrooms Slit pushed his way to the barrels that contained fresh fatigues. He rejected several of the wrong size until he found a workable pair and emptied his sand filled pockets of his knives, his flask, and his handgun. He unbuckled his lancers brace brace and rolled it all this up in the clean fatigues, which were stashed aside with his boots. Dirt cascaded out of his clothes as he stripped. The water pressure in the shower was harder than usual and Slit let his head hang as it sprayed his shoulders. Slit suddenly realized he was dead exhausted. Even dressing and walking back to his bunk seemed like a monumental task. In his bunk he was asleep the moment he collapsed on the fraying mattress. 

N-------

Nux paced in his bay, puttering with his tools to no real purpose. He paused in collecting a set of wrenches from the floor to drink copiously from a liquor bottle. As he roughly fitted the wrench holes onto the ends of bent nails in the wall, his hands shook so badly that he messed up several times in an attempt to loop the tool onto it's hanging. He frowned angrily and tried again, hooking it on so forcefully that the nail fell loose and fell behind the workbench with a chink.

Nux threw the wrench down as hard as he could with an abrupt clang and roared in frustration. The echo of metal on metal mixed with the clamoring of war boys below, who had finished the detail for the day. He braced his arms on his workbench and breathed in several times through his nose before letting out another aggravated shout and sweeping everything off the tabletop, clattering it to the ground in disarray.

He had to get out of here. He stomped out of his bay, draining his bottle and pitching it from the window.

He hadn't set out with a goal in mind but he came to find himself entering the courtyard where his brothers teemed, drinking and conversing over each other. A portion of Unit four had collected around a drum where a bonfire burned, giving off black smoke. He watched them practice lance throwing from a distance, competing against each other in accuracy and distance with practice spears.

Neither Slit or Sid were anywhere to be seen, but Rak was with them. Nux watched from the shadows, looking for any sign on his face that anything out of the normal had happened. Rak could typically be seen running his mouth, grinning widely to show off yellowing chipped teeth, but he was unusually stoic. His features conveyed only concentration as he lined up his shot and threw it. Nux moved on. He didn't want to talk to anyone or do anything. The atmosphere was generally cheerful and Nux bristled at every banal conversation he overheard as he wandered aimlessly. It felt as though he was watching everything from inside a bubble, as if he was intrinsically apart somehow.

He had never considered another way, but all at once Nux wished that he wasn't a war boy. An unwelcome torrent of memories flooded through him in a painful rush. A woman's voice, proud and affectionate, his own tiny fingers wrapped around the thumb of a calloused, warm hand. Emotion clogged his throat and he swallowed several times. Null's face, covered in grease, gone so soon after they had met, his parents, gone so long ago he barely recalled, and Nik.

Nux clenched his eyes shut and cursed this wasteland. Cursed the citadel and everyone in it. Cursed the man responsible for it all. Fearful prickles of shame rose up the back of his spine and Nux snapped his eyes open and glanced around, as if the brothers around them could hear his thoughts. These were heretic, treacherous thoughts. It wasn't fitting to dwell on such sober notions, so Nux stood up and reckoned he needed a drink.

A bloated, old war boy by the name of Haig was the man to see about any non-ration goods a war boy could hope to barter. A black thumb, Haig had outlived almost an entire generation. It was rumored that he was a soldier in Immortan's original army, so despite his slow gait, and his tumored, fat body, he commanded great respect. He had ears all over the citadel, and his dealings were an open secret that never seemed to come under question. He was always good for a bottle, provided that a war boy had an equal exchange in goods or labor. War boys had few goods, and more often than not their weapons and possessions cycled in and out of consignment to fuel their addictions. Those with nothing could trade favors. In this way, Haig seldom performed his duties around the citadel, managing a constant rotation of men to work his shifts in the bay while he sat on his ass, balancing his book with a stick of charcoal. 

Nux waited in a disorganized queue for his turn to beg. Haig counted out bottles to one man after another until he turned to Nux, nodding curtly in acknowledgment. 

"Don't have anything to give." Nux murmured apologetically. Haig grunted, as if he wasn't surprised and tugged his book towards him. Blackened fingers wrote "Nux" under a list of other war boys and Haig muttered to himself before telling Nux, 

"I got you for...let's see...in two days, first shift in the morning." Nux nodded gratefully in assent and took his payment in a rusty capped milk bottle. He turned and stepped out of the way for the next man, and found Kabul standing behind him. He sneered at Nux and gave him a once over, taking in his scrapes and bruises indifferently. Nux stepped to the side without comment, returning the sneer. He walked away listening to Kabul argue with Haig, 

"One more."

"You cunt, I've already got you down for two shifts and fuck if you didn't show up for a single one of them. Not giving you shit! Move out of the way!"

"I was on detail for Jeff I can't help that!" Kabul retorted angrily.

"I said fuck off, you!" Haig growled waving a plump arm at Kabul, who drew himself up in indignation.

Cunt wasn't used to being told no, Nux thought, amused. The waiting crowd tired of Kabul and they all shouted him down until he relented furiously, throwing insults behind him as he stormed away.

Nux had found a barrel against the wall and sat in half shadow, watching a scowling Kabul sift around in his pockets uselessly, throwing a resentful look at Haig. He huffed in annoyance and scanned around. To Nux's deep dismay, his bleary gaze bore down on him. Kabul seemed to be calculating, but before he could do make a move Nux got up and retreated back into the halls of the citadel. He was in absolutely no mood.

At the top of the first stairwell he heard the sound of heavy boots starting up behind him. He pinched his eyes closed in frustration and tried to keep his stride casual. When he peered over his shoulder to see that it was indeed Kabul, Nux considered his options and made a split second decision to pretend he didnt see him. Maybe the dumb sleg would lose interest.

Nux gave up the charade two floors above as the sound of Kabuls wretched footsteps pursued him still. It would be ridiculous now to pretend he didnt know he was there. He stepped behind the wall at the top and waited anxiously, bolstering himself.

Kabul emmerged from the tunnel, his hulking form scanning briefly until he clocked the younger driver. Nux raised his chin and stood as tall as he could, still reaching only chin height on Kabul. He gritted his teeth as Kabul smiled predatorily.

"You gonna finish that?" The larger man asked him, indicating Nux's grog.

"Yeah." Nux told him simply, careful not to betray any fear.

"Heard your bitch is dead." Kabul told him conversationally. "Or were you his bitch?"

Nux's lip was curling and his face felt hot with anger. Kabul made a grab at the bottle but Nux jerked it away and stowed it away in his back pocket.

"Listen to me you mediocre shit," Kabul hissed, taking a cursory look down the halls, "What would you give for me not to drag your arse in there and fuck you bloody raw right now?" indicating the door to the bathroom.

Nux could only hope to hold him off briefly in his bruised up shape so he wasted no time in throwing the first punch. Kabul stumbled and fell in on him and they both grappled viciously, knocking off the walls and cursing the other. Nux bloodied Kabuls nose but was losing purchase against the larger man who grabbed onto Nux's waist band and dragged him, fighting, up against the bathroom door. They toppled through it and fell to the damp stone floor snarling. Nux managed to kick him hard in the stomach but Kabul kept coming, wrestling Nux onto his back. He wrapped his hands around Nux's throat.

"You pathetic cocksucker..." growled Kabul hatefully. "You had it coming...coming for a long time...you fucking...Schlanger..." He was grinding his words out through clenched teeth, redoubling his strangle hold on Nux.

"gughhh!" Nux choked out, thrashing. His head felt like it was swelling and the pressure behind his eyes was growing painfully. He couldn't get a breath or a hold on his assailant. Kabul was laughing now, sweat dripping from his forehead and falling into Nux's face. Nux clawed at his wrists, leaving gashes, but Kabul didn't even wince. He gave up trying to pry Kabul off him, his hands grabbing desperately at any part of Kabul he could reach. His fingers scrabbled at Kabul's fatigues, at his boots, hoping against hope that if Kabul had a knife he would get to it first. He didn't. He didn't have anything. If he didn't get free soon Kabul would have his way with him right here on the bathroom floor and Nux knew it wouldn't be the last time. If he let it happen once, he would keep coming back, reasserting his dominance until he had made Nux into his bitch. Panic motivated a last desperate search of his own pockets. Nux twisted his hips and found the bottle. He wrenched it free and brought it down by the neck, smashing it on the floor.

He didn't waver, but brought the shard of glass ferociously across Kabul's face. He reared back with a roar like an animal, taking away one hand to grab at Nux's wrist, but Nux evaded him even as Kabul palmed his head, and forced his face to the side into the broken glass and spilled booze. Nux slashed at him again, heart pounding, and caught him in the neck. Kabul fell back in surprise, bringing a hand up to the horrifying, gushing wound.

Abruptly, Nux realized that this wouldn't end. It could never, ever end between Kabul and himself. Hate ran so deeply between them that Nux would be looking over his shoulder for as long as he lived after this. Kabul would never let a grudge like this go, not after the mutilation Nux had inflicted.

He pressed his advantage all in one movement, scrambling to his knees and forcing the end of the bottle neck deep into the hollow beneath Kabul's jaw. Blood ran down his arm, enveloping Nuxs hand. Kabul's eyes went wide, bugging out at Nux, who was snarling, twisting the glass as far as it would go, feeling the sickening snap of sinew resisting his blade beneath the skin.

It wasn't until Kabul had fallen limply against a toilet did Nux let up. He dropped the bottle neck onto the ground and stumbled backwards, letting his back rest against the wall as he caught his breath. His heart was racing and he looked onto the scene with terror. He knew he was dead but it seemed unbelievably real now. He was in big, big trouble. Assassinating a comrade over petty rivalry was so strictly forbidden that violators would be thrown from the tower in punishment. Except for special circumstances, it was considered stealing from Immortan Joe.

Nux snapped out of his revelry and quicky raced to the sink, throwing panicked looks over his shoulder as he rinsed his shaking hands clean of blood. He wiped away as much as he could from his torso until he was satisfied and then leaned his ear against the door listening hard. If anyone saw him leave here...

Nux slipped out without a notion of where he could go. His racing mind wondered wildly if he should just throw himself off the tower now to avoid his brothers witnessing his pathetic execution entirely. His body seemed to move on it's own and soon Nux found himself standing at the entrance to the Unit four bunkhouse. His feet brought him, without permission, to stand over Slit's bunk. He knelt softly, placing a warning hand over the lancers mouth, and shook him awake.


	13. Chapter 13

S--------------

Slit awoke in a panic. The hand clamped over his mouth tightened and as his eyes adjusted to the dark, Nux loomed over him. Slit sat up, blearily squinting at Nux. It was quickly apparent that something was very wrong. Nux shook his head in answer to a question Slit hadn't yet asked. Barely contained panic was written all over his face. Slit stared, disoriented, but Nux was already backing away, stepping carefully to avoid waking anyone. 

Slit stuffed his feet into his boots and followed apprehensively as Nux lead him down a series of stairs. They descended to the weapon repair bay on the third floor, where Nux took a sharp turn down a darkened hall. Repair bay was closed by now and it's walls were silent of the usual echo of busy soldiers, but Nux was peering around over his shoulder as if he expected someone to jump out at him.

Slit was confused. He was about to grab Nux by the arm and demand he explain himself, but Nux stopped and rounded in front of a bathroom door. His lips moved to speak but he couldn't seem to spit it out until Slit hissed impatiently at him,

"What the hell are you doing?!"

Nux swallowed and held his hands out in front of him, as if bracing Slit for bad news. 

"I've done something." He told him, his face registering a mix of shock and terror. 

Slit lowered his eyebrows and looked suspiciously from Nux to the bathroom door. Nux shook his head slowly at Slit as if deciding that bringing him here had been a mistake. He ran his hands over his face guiltily. 

"Nux...What did you do?" Slit asked him slowly.

Nux took a great shaking breath, and nodded at the door, looking away in uncomfortable anticipation.

Slit stared at him in bewilderment, then cracked the door a wide enough to look inside. 

The scene before him caused his breath to hitch and ice to form on his spine. The floor around the rusted toilet was being enveloped in a shocking red pool of blood. It soaked the chest of the slumping figure of a very still war boy. No... a dead one. Slit's jaw dropped open as he realized who it was. Bright waves of panic pulsed through his veins. He let the door shut quickly and rounded on Nux, his voice heavy with shock as he growled, 

"You're......you're telling me he's dead?"

Nux nodded quickly, looking frightened. 

"You did this!?"

Another nod. Slit held his gaze steadily and he could tell Nux wasn't lying. Slit felt oddly numb. When he recalled this moment later he would realize that he wasn't really all that surprised after all. The hostility between Nux and Kabul was at a boiling point. 

Footsteps echoed vaguely down the corridor as a war boy drug himself up the steps towards the bunk floors. The two ceased to breath, whipping their heads to stare in alarm down the hall. When the noise had stopped, Slit grabbed Nux by his arm and pushed him through into the bathroom.

His eyes affixed automatically to Kabul's corpse and it made him feel sick to his stomach but he could barely look away long enough to slam the deadbolt on the door into place. Nux was palming his head with both hands, aghast. The scene practically told the story for itself, but he still had to know.

"What happened here!?"

Nux's voiced edged on hysteria when he answered, "Slit, I fucking swear I had to...I had to! I couldn't let...he followed me..." in a whispered rush.

Slit stared at him incredulously before turning back to Kabul. He felt an odd weight in his belly. That man had been with them for a long time. He'd known him well enough to believe that he deserved what had happened to him here. By that logic, Slit probably did too and he looked at Nux as if seeing him clearly for the first time. He vowed never to underestimate Nux again, but would he even have the chance to? 

"They'll throw you off for this..." Muttered the lancer.

Nux's face was drawn. He nodded. 

"I know that...I know." He seemed to be waiting for Slit to explode, but Slit just felt tired. He considered the problem. The problem. Slit certainly didn't need this problem. If the Imperators even knew he was here he would be thrown off alongside Nux. Still, somehow, he didn't consider walking away. 

"We could get rid of 'em..." Slit suggested doubtfully. 

Nux groaned with anxiety. "Where!? They'd see!" 

They would, thought Slit in dismay. Lookouts at every entrance would be sure to notice two of their own carrying a dead man, however drunk they might be. Slit looked around, forcing himself to remain calm. There was a window chiseled out of the wall. No, that wouldn't work, Slit thought, they would still find him with a slashed throat. It wouldn't be very hard for unit members to trace this back to Nux. He pinched his eyes closed in frustration. Kabul needed to disappear. 

The small bathroom was virtually featureless, with only a rusty metal toilet that serviced the entire repair bay during working hours, and a small grate on the floor for drainage. If only they could access the sewer tunnel beneath it. All human waste was funneled through the same gravity system, feeding into a single fetid pit. As pups, they had scared1 each other with legends of the ghosts of war boys who died soft, dragging unworthy pups down into the sewer to drown in the shit. It gave him an idea...

"You were a black thumb, you used to live on this floor right?" 

Nux gaped at him in confusion. "Yeah...but what does that..."

"In the washroom...was there a big grate in there?" Slit interrupted him impatiently.

Nux caught his implication and shook his head, "No way! That would take too much time!" he insisted. 

"Too much time?!" Slit hissed back at him incredulously, "Are you too busy right now??" 

Nux frowned at the sarcasm, but after a brief hesitation, he shrugged in assent.

"Alright, yeah. Why not." He said doubtfully.

They exchanged a long look, then Slit nodded and they set to work. They moved as quickly as they could to stifle any more bleeding by stuffing handkerchiefs around the oozing wound. A fast trip through the repair bay found Slit a bucket of dirty water and some rags. They sopped up what blood they could and rinsed the rest down the drain, slopping water on the floor and nudging the bloodied glass shards into he grate. It took both of them, breathing hard from the effort, to haul the hulking war boy through the darkened corridor. Every noise made Slits neck prickle with apprehension. By the time Nux shouldered open the door to the wash room, they were both sweating. 

Inside, Nux dropped Kabul's arms in disgust and his limp head cracked sickeningly on the floor. Slit winced but Nux wasted no time prying the edge of the grate up with a screwdriver. It took both of them pulling to leverage it up out of the floor, where rust held it it fast. They both cringed at the loud scraping noise it made against the stone. The sound echoed down the vertical tunnel they had uncovered. They stood and peered down the hole. 

"So, uh..." Nux prompted, awkwardly. 

Slit looked ruefully at his former friend. Mediocre, Kabul...he thought, but he brought his fingers together anyway in the sign of the V8 and said,

"Witness." 

He looked pointedly at Nux, daring him to say anything. Nux wrinkled his nose and spat on the floor, looking away. Fine. He dropped to his knee and together they dragged Kabul over the hole, where gravity did the rest. The last Slit saw of him were his boots slipping over the edge into cool blackness. A muted splash from the depths could be heard and a vague, putrid smell wafted upward. Slit tossed the bloodied rags after him and shifted the grate back into it's place, where the rusted edges fit so poorly that they had to stomp it down. They hastily abandoned the second floor, adrenaline propelling them up the staircase to the bunkhouses.

Slit peeled off at the entrance to his bunks. He wanted to put this entire day behind him and forget it ever happened but Nux whispered at his back,

"Wait!" 

He turned to Nux wearily.

"I'm not sorry."

Slit didn't mistake the defiance in Nux's voice, but there wasn't need for it. 

"Didn't say you should be." He told him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feed me comments. I need feedback!


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